Northern lights in Slovakia: Where can you see? – SME.sk

BRATISLAVA. In some parts of Slovakia and the Czech Republic, it should be possible to observe aurora borealis on Sunday night.

Petr Horálek from the Institute of Physics in Opava pointed this out with reference to the National Office for the Ocean and Atmosphere.

“The glow is the result of the interaction of a dense cloud of charged particles with the Earth’s atmosphere. The cloud broke away from the Sun during an extremely strong Class X1 eruption on October 28 at 5:35 p.m. If the geomagnetic storm is as strong as astronomers predict, the glow will be our limbs low above the northern horizon most likely after dark, “he said.

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Weather report according to Horálek, she is very good so far. The fact that the Moon will not rise until the second half of the night should also contribute to good visibility. According to him, it is necessary to find “a place with a perfect view of the north, undisturbed by light pollution”, for observation.

He added that aurorae usually occur 80 to 150 kilometers and rarely up to 400 kilometers above the earth’s surface. He explained that the Earth has its own natural magnetic shield, thanks to which most of this dangerous radiation is deflected.

However, part of the solar material remains in the areas around the Earth’s magnetic poles, where the lines of force of the Earth’s magnetic field and particles penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere, Horálek informed, adding that the so-called excitation and ionization and emission of visible light. Its shades correspond to the values ​​of radiated energy.

He added that green and red glow, which correspond to excited oxygen, are most often visible. The blue color of the glow corresponds to ionized nitrogen.