NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) captured this image on Oct. 27, showing active regions of the sun that are causing geomagnetic storms to effect Earth. (Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA)

Tonight, space weather is going to hit Earth, causing an aurora borelis, or the northern lights, to possibly extend into the northern United States.

Why? There's a “strong” geomagnetic storm at work, causing highly charged particles from the sun to interact with our planet's magnetic field. Near the North and South Poles, auroras are forecast to occur the evening of Nov. 3, with visibility extending down into Canada and maybe the U.S. in the north and outward from Antarctica in the south.

Last night, Nov. 2, in Minnesota, Iowa, Ohio and other parts of the U.S. saw the show.

The geomagnetic activity also prompted NOAA to . Right now, it's a G1, with a “strong” G3 storm possible. (Solar storms, similar to hurricanes, run from G1, mild, to G5, extreme.)

(MORE: )

“The more extreme the events, the less frequent they are,” Jeffrey Newmark, a heliophysicist with NASA, told weather.com. “A G3 may occur up to 100 to 200 times per solar cycle, [or every 11 years].”

Two solar events can cause these geomagnetic storms. One, known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME, is a massive explosion of plasma from the sun. CMEs cause the most-extreme solar storms that can have short, but potentially catastrophic, effects on our planet's power grid.

The second cause, a coronal hole, pushes a steady stream of geomagnetic activity toward Earth, rather than one extreme energy flare. These events can last two or three days.

“These coronal holes cause a fast flow of solar wind … this fast solar wind interacts with the slow solar wind that fills interplanetary space,” Newmark said.

This compressed geomagnetic energy then barrels toward Earth's magnetic poles, spewing high-speed particles of energy outward from the North and South Poles, causing auroras, he explained. This energy can also disrupt the power grid.

NOAA issues warnings in part to allow power companies and utilities to prepare for possible space weather-caused voltage corrections. An extreme storm could potentially prompt a massive power disruption, which is why the federal government recently released a , or a plan to improve solar storm forecasting and response to avoid impacts from extreme CMEs.

NASA, which develops the science behind NOAA's warnings, also recently announced a flagship mission, called the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS), to better understand what causes solar storms.

Tonight's warning likely doesn't pose much threat to the world's power system, but it does represent an interesting tension between science, technology and nature, Newmark said.

“The fascinating part of the nature is you see the SDO images of the coronal hole that we have [pictured above], and they're just amazing to look at. You look up at the sky, and you see the effect of that, the aurora, and it's beautiful and amazing,” he said. “The other part is the science and technology. …Three hundred years ago we didn't care about solar storms because their only effect was the aurora. Today, in our modern technological society, we are susceptible to the effects of the sun.”

More study is needed to address these risks from solar storms, he added, along with these words of advice for anyone living in : “Look up.”

MORE ON WEATHER.COM:

The ESO 3.6-meter telescope at La Silla observatory in Chile, during observations. (ESO/S. Brunier)