This weekend is a good weekend to go outside and look up.  If you’re in the Sioux Falls area go outside and look North.  You may see the sky glowing green and other colors.  Recently the sun has had some CME (Coronal Mass Ejections) from a big unstable sunspot.  These explosions have been sending charged particles toward Earth which then when they get caught in our magnetic fields and hit the high atmosphere excite gas atoms and cause the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights). If you want to keep an eye on what is happening on the sun and to know when you may be able to see the Northern lights I would suggest visiting spaceweather.com frequently.

While you’re out looking for the Northern lights look toward the West in the early night and you’ll see two very bright stars next to each other.  These stars are actually planets.  Venus is the brightest one and Jupiter is the slightly dimmer on.  From them if you look to the East you’ll see another orange tinted star.  This star is actually Mars which is really close to Earth right now.  If you can’t find Mars in the early evening go out a little later and look East.  I’ve got some old photos of these planets and maybe if I’m not too lazy this weekend I’ll try to take some more.