To be honest, we’re entering a not so spectacular season for star watchers.

The great winter constellation Orion the Hunter and his posse of surrounding constellations are beginning their gradual march to the western horizon, and by about mid-May, most of them will already be below the western horizon before the end of evening twilight.

The spring constellations that replace those winter shiners are a little bit of a letdown. Another curse is the fact that it doesn’t get dark enough for real star gazing until after 10 p.m. because the time of year is aided and abetted by daylight-saving time.

This spring star gazing season may be a little more lively, though, because of aurora, otherwise known as northern lights.

As a matter of fact, aurora may be a little more common through the end of next year and even beyond that because northern lights are basically the blow off of huge solar storms from our sun, and this is turning into a stormy time for our home star.

The sun’s 10,000 degree Fahrenheit surface is a caldron of chaos. There are constant storms going on.

The sun is a nearly one-million-mile wide ball of mainly hydrogen gas that’s being squeezed by tremendous gravitational force. It has such a tremendous pull of gravity because this huge ball of gas is three hundred thousand times the mass of our Earth, and the more mass you have, the more gravitational pull you have.

The sun is squeezing itself so hard that internal pressure drives up the core temperature to more than 27 million degrees. That insanely high temperature sets off nuclear fusion in the stellar core, which results in the incredible light and other energy we see on the surface, called the photosphere.

From there, the light and energy are flung off in all directions into our solar system, with our Earth picking up its meager but life-giving share.

What makes the sun’s surface so tumultuous is that the sun rotates differentially. Because the sun is giant ball of gas, different parts of the sun spin at different rates.

The sun’s equator makes one complete rotation in 25 days, but the polar region takes 35 days to accomplish the same feat.

That results in the sun having an incredibly complicated magnetic field that is anything but static.

Magnetic field lines frantically cross and collide with each other resulting in sunspots, which are slightly cooler patches on the surface, as well as large flares that are capable of expelling coronal mass ejections, or CME, which are huge eruptions of highly charged protons and electrons.

These charged particles move like celestial bats out of solar hell at speeds that can exceed four million miles an hour. At times, the Earth finds itself in the path of these particles and that’s when auroras arrive in our skies.

For reasons that aren’t totally understood, the sunspots and extracurricular energy bursts go through an 11-year cycle, and for the next couple of years the sun will be on the high energy end of its “hyperactive” cycle, with many more flares and CME.

When these charged particles reach the vicinity of our planet, the magnetic field of Earth directs these particles toward both the north and south geomagnetic poles.

These geomagnetic poles don’t exactly coincide with the terrestrial poles, but they’re close. The northern geomagnetic pole is in far northern Canada. That’s why we see more northern lights around Butler than the folks see in Florida.

Once these charged particles get to within 70 to 100 miles of Earth’s surface, they work their magic with our atmosphere. They temporarily disrupt the structure of atoms and molecules. Electrons are temporarily knocked away from the nuclei of atoms resulting in the discharge of light.

As billions and billions and billions of collisions occur, the brilliant colors of the aurora dazzle us surface dwellers. Most of the time we see greenish white colors as oxygen atoms are excited, but sometimes bluish, purplish and even reddish tinges will appear when the charged particles react with various states of nitrogen in our atmosphere.

Northern lights seem to float across the sky in waves and curtains as they follow the lines of Earth’s magnetic field. Most of the time, northern lights are restricted to the northern part of the sky, but during really active displays they can spread all over the heavens.

During extreme solar flares and massive CME that take aim on Earth, the plasma of charged particles can interfere with orbiting satellites and possibly even disrupt electric power grids. That happened in northeast Canada back in 1989.

Airline flights are diverted away from polar regions for fear of temporarily severed communications. That actually happened to Air Force One back in the 1980s with President Reagan aboard. The leader of the free world was cut off from the world.

Space Weather, a branch of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, does nothing but monitor the sun and alert power companies and other entities if a solar flare or CME is on the way. Fortunately, there’s about a two-day interval between the time the solar flare is observed and the time the CME reaches Earth that allows time for power systems to be partially put to sleep to minimize damage.

There are several good websites you can check that will give you some fairly reliable short-term forecasts of aurora.

I think the best is the official website of Space Weather from NOAA. Click them in at www.swpc.noaa.gov, where you can also learn more about solar flares and the geomagnetic storms they produce in our atmosphere. You can also sign up for texts and e-mail alerts that are extremely helpful.

Northern lights have become a fairly predictable phenomenon, but every so often they’ll show up unexpectedly, so always keep an eye out for an added and beautiful attraction in the show overhead.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and is author of the book, “Pennsylvania Starwatch,” available at bookstores and at his website www.lynchandthestars.com.