INSTAGRAM/@GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY | The Aurora Borealis, more commonly known as the Northern Lights, were visible from Washington D.C. on Thursday, October 10th.
Georgetown University students recently had the rare opportunity to witness the northern lights, an astronomical phenomenon occurring when solar particles collide with Earth’s atmosphere to create vibrant displays of light. While typically visible at higher latitudes, the northern lights were briefly observed from Washington, D.C., sparking excitement among the campus community on the evening of Oct. 10.
Many students gathered outdoors, eager to catch a glimpse of the novel light show, an event that is most often visible in places like Scandinavia or northern Canada. For those on campus, this event was a rare chance to witness a natural phenomenon.
Bradley Fugetta (GRD) (CAS ’23), a PhD candidate in the Physics Department, explained how the northern lights occur and how they can be seen on Earth.
“You have all of these floating positively-charged nuclei and then electrons that are freely moving around,” Fugetta told The Hoya. “These charged particles, often ejected from the sun during solar flares, are then carried toward Earth by solar winds.”
According to Fugetta, as these charged particles approach Earth, they interact with its magnetic field, which channels them toward the polar regions where the auroras typically occur. Earth’s magnetic field acts like a protective shield, but it also directs the solar particles along magnetic flux lines toward the North and South Poles, creating the aurora.
Fugetta explained how observing the sun allows us to determine when the northern lights are most likely to be visible.
“We know when they are going to happen, because the light coming from the sun reaches us much earlier than the particles,” Fugetta said. “We should be able to know probably at least a week in advance by looking at where solar flares are happening. If the sun has a particularly large number of solar flares, we can predict that there’s going to be a large geomagnetic storm, making it more likely that you’ll see aurora borealis.”
Geomagnetic storms, which occur when solar winds and flares intensify, increase the chances of seeing the northern lights at locations of lower latitudes, such as D.C. The northern lights occur when charged particles from the sun collide with gases — such as oxygen and nitrogen — in Earth’s atmosphere, releasing energy as light.
“As the oxygen and nitrogen atoms decay from higher energy states to lower energy states, they release photons,” Fugetta said. “The green and the red colors you’re seeing are quantized based on different particles.”
For students like Umar Ahmed Badami (SFS ’26), witnessing the aurora from a location known for light pollution made the event even more striking.
“Even though the campus has a ton of light pollution, thanks to being in D.C., it was still extremely bright and a wonderful sight,” Ahmed Badami wrote to The Hoya.
Ahmed Badami elaborated on the geographical distribution of aurora sightings, emphasizing the exceptional nature of the recent event in D.C.
“Generally, the northern lights — and their analog, the southern lights — are only visible at very high latitudes… so it’s extremely rare and special to be able to see them from less extreme locations like D.C.,” Ahmed Badami wrote.
According to Fugetta, even though the lights are rare in the D.C. area, students should be on the lookout for announcements of potential solar activity. The brief but awe-inspiring appearance of the northern lights over Georgetown serves as a reminder of the powerful and unpredictable forces at play in our solar system.
“Just watch out for the news,” Fugetta said. “You as an individual probably cannot predict it unless you have a really good telescope. But someone can predict it. You can be aware.”
Ryan Shea (CAS ’28), one of the students who observed the northern lights, noted the collective excitement the event generated.
“It was a really cool experience to see a bunch of people all kind of gather at once and watch,” Shea told The Hoya. “It almost reminds me of when the eclipse happened, and was just a bunch of people looking at this really, really cool astronomical event.”