Northern Lights in Georgia | Will you see the Northern Lights in Georgia?

ATLANTA — UPDATE AT 10:00 p.m.: This solar storm exceeded the Space Weather Prediction Center’s initial predictions and the Northern Lights were spotted in Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina!

If you look north in the sky and see faint hues of red, purple, pink or green, these are the Northern Lights.

RELATED: Northern Lights Can Be Seen in Metro Atlanta! See all photos from those across the state

If you take a photo, you can share it with us using the “Nearby” section of the 11Alive app or share them with us on social networks.

We’ll share photos from this historic solar storm on 11Alive at 11 p.m.

The Space Weather Prediction Center has released a G5 geomagnetic storm observation, the first since 2003 during the “Great Halloween Solar Storm.” A G4 storm hit Earth in March, but for us it was during the day.

A series of several CMEs or coronal mass ejections from the sun are already arriving in Earth’s outer atmosphere. These are “explosions of plasma and magnetic fields coming from the solar corona,” according to SWPC.

As of Friday evening, brilliant displays of the Northern Lights were visible in parts of Europe. They have been observed in many countries, from France to Germany, from Austria to the United Kingdom. They were even visible in parts of Paris and as far away as Italy.

Once the sun sets, the northern half of the United States could also see the Northern Lights, depending on weather conditions.

Under a “severe” G4 geomagnetic storm, there may be communications problems with some radio frequencies, GPS interruptions, and impacts to satellites and spacecraft.

The last time there was an Extreme G5 storm was over 20 years ago in October 2003, nicknamed the “Halloween Solar Storms.”

The Kp index is expected to reach 9. This can give us an idea of ​​how far away the southern lights might be visible.

The Northern Lights could be visible to the naked eye in many northern states. The map below shows this.

Not to the naked eye, or not at all, depending on where you are and how the night progresses.

There is a chance with a Kp rating of 8 that they will be visible as far south as the Georgia-Tennessee border, but low on the horizon and too faint to see for yourself. Often the easiest way to see them in these cases is to take a long exposure photograph. Light pollution can easily ruin these chances.

However, it is possible that the Northern Lights will be visible in East Tennessee, not East Tennessee. Also far from Georgia.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks projects a map further south for aurora visibility than NOAA’s.

According to their website, auroras are flares of light “caused by collisions between electrically charged particles exiting the sun in the solar wind that enter the Earth’s atmosphere and collide with molecules and gas atoms.”