Northern Lights May Illuminate Northern U.S. Friday Night

Once every eleven years, the sun reaches a crescendo of activity, and humanity is reminded that the same star warming our days also sculpts light across our nights. This Friday, NOAA forecasts a Kp index of three, nudging the aurora borealis southward into the skies of the northern United States — North Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, and beyond — as solar radiation spills into Earth's magnetic field. The display arrives not at the peak of this unusual solar maximum, which has already surpassed scientific predictions and may deliver the strongest auroras in five centuries, but as a quieter, gentl