A powerful solar storm is due to hit Earth on Wednesday, sparking beautiful auroras. Here's how to see them.

• A powerful solar storm due to hit the Earth on Wednesday could spark brilliant auroras.
• Auroras have been seen as far south as California, Utah, and New Mexico in recent months.
• Expect to see more auroras in coming months as the sun's activity reaches a peak.

A powerful geomagnetic storm is due to hit the Earth Wednesday, causing dazzling auroras across the planet which may be seen farther south than usual. 

The coming auroras have been predicted after the sun released some plasma during a coronal mass ejection on Sunday that is currently traveling toward us at breakneck speeds.

NASA predicts this plasma will hit the Earth on Wednesday, exciting our outer atmosphere and helping auroras shine.

It will be the latest in a series of solar storms that have hit our planet in recent months, as the sun nears a peak of activity.

The storms have sparked auroras that have been seen as far south as North Carolina, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, California, and Oklahoma.

Here's how to spot the dazzling spectacle:

How to spot and snap the aurora

Before heading out, check the aurora forecast on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website to see if you could see the aurora in your area.

If you have clear skies, head for a place where there is low light pollution, away from city lights.

Prepare for cold weather with blankets and hot beverages. You may have used your phone or looked at screens to get you where you need to go, so be patient, and let your eyes adjust to the darkness. 

You can try to snap pictures of the auroras with a camera, but make sure not to transfer it too quickly from a hot to a cold environment to avoid condensation, according to the Royal Photographic Society.

Preset your camera before leaving a warmer space so your fingers don't get too cold — higher aperture may be better, but you may have to adjust your settings if the aurora is moving quickly (you can find information on how to set SLR cameras here.) 

This storm is caused by a powerful solar flare

The sun released a long-lasting M1.5-class solar flare on Sunday, a burst of radiation that accelerates charged particles away from the sun, per spaceweather.com.

The radiation from the flare traveled at the speed of light and reached Earth on Sunday, causing some minor radio signal blackouts over the weekend.

The flare also hurtled a coronal mass ejection (CME), a cloud of plasma and magnetic fields, toward our planet. This travels more slowly, though it can reach speeds of 600 miles per second. As the CME hits our ionosphere — a charged layer that surrounds the Earth — it will excite particles in the sky that light up to create the aurora. 

Geomagnetic storms are notoriously hard to forecast, but according to spaceweather.com, NASA's predictions suggest the storm could hit as a moderate (G2) to strong (G3) storm, about halfway up the geomagnetic storm scale. 

That means there's a chance aurora could be seen further south than usual, though we should be safe from the worst effects of geomagnetic storms, like grid disruptions.

Expect more of these aurora-brightening solar events in the coming months

Powerful geomagnetic storms are becoming more common as the sun nears a solar maximum, which happens when our star's poles flip, causing havoc with magnetic fields at the surface of our star.

As the sun's activity ramps up, we're also seeing more stunning solar phenomena.

Over the past few months, we've seen a plasma vortex swirling like a whirlpool around the solar pole, a massive coronal "hole" in our sun, and a solar "tornado" the size of 14 Earths.

Space weather isn't just pretty 

If this week's solar storm hits at a G3 level, there shouldn't be much adverse effect on our planet's infrastructure. But as our sun gets more active, scientists have warned that we could be at higher risk for a more powerful solar storm — up to G5.

These bursts of electromagnetic energy can be quite dangerous, as they affect everything from the power grid to GPS signals.

"Space weather can ground flights," Owens previously told Insider, adding that the Federal Aviation Administration "won't allow flights if they don't have both radio and satellite communications."

This solar flare has already affected radio signals sent from Earth, which need to bounce off the ionosphere to get from one point to the other — that's less efficient in rough space weather.

As the magnetic fields from the sun crash into the Earth, they can also cause grid surges that can overwhelm power systems and underwater pipelines. 

On March 10, 1989, a huge solar flare caused a storm that surged the Quebec power grid, which was out of commission for eight long hours on a weekday morning, affecting about 6 million people.

Storms can make the atmosphere more dense which can crash satellites, as was the case in February 2022, when 40 of 49 of SpaceX's Starlink satellites launched into orbit were knocked out of commission. 

Charged particles from the sun can also glitch electronic materials. This usually goes unnoticed, but on rare occasions, these particles have been linked to water mines exploding and phantom votes showing up in elections. People have even attributed their pacemaker glitches to these solar particles. 

This story was originally published on April 24, 2023, and was updated to reflect information from the latest storm due to cause bright auroras. 

Correction: April 28, 2023 — An earlier version of the story misstated the speed of the winds traveling from the sun. It was 600 miles per second, not 600 miles per hour.