Northern Lights Seen In Multiple NJ Towns Overnight

NEW JERSEY — The night sky lit up with pink, yellow, purple, and green hues in multiple New Jersey towns late Monday into Tuesday, as the northern lights put on a show for skywatchers.

The brilliant display, also called the aurora borealis, is created when energized particles from the Sun collide with Earth's upper atmosphere, and the planet's magnetic field redirects the particles.

Plenty of residents have been posting their photos of this atmospheric phenomenon in the New Jersey Astronomy Group on Facebook, from North Jersey down to Cape May Point. Many of the photos were captured between 1 a.m. and 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning, though some residents also said they saw the lights early Monday morning, too.

Residents in Montgomery Township, Bedminster, Denville, Mahwah, Hackettstown, Cape May Point, Barnegat, Hillsborough, Hopatcong, North Haledon, Sparta, Mountain Lakes, Spotswood, Manahawkin and beyond shared photos of Northern Lights sightings overnight.

The ethereal curtains of light have been seen in multiple U.S. locations over the past several months. The Space Weather Prediction Center’s aurora dashboard is a good site to bookmark for aurora chasers. In general, the best times to see the northern lights are within an hour or two of midnight.

The sun is currently at or near “solar maximum,” the peak in its 11-year cycle when heightened geomagnetic storming increases the chances of seeing the aurora far south of its Arctic range.

Chances of seeing northern lights generally increase around the fall equinox, when the sun produces a surplus of geomagnetic storms — almost twice the annual average — but this fall and the coming year should be especially spectacular as Solar Cycle 25 reaches its peak, which NOAA predicts will occur from November through March 2026.

The auroral strength is measured by the Kp index, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center. In general, the chances of seeing the lights are best with a Kp index of at least 5, The Washington Post wrote in a story about aurora borealis tourism.

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