The Auroral Ovals. These two animations are showing how much the auroral ovals, located above north and south magnetic poles are rapidly changing along the course of about 7 hours only. Such plots are produced at the SEC/NOAA as part of the solar activity survey, from data gathered by the NOAA POES satellite. Various energetic events at Sun -to some of which auroras are linked- may affect satellites, crews and some activities at Earth. The auroral oval, North and South is what marks where the energetic particles of the solar wind, once leaked at the "polar cusps" of the magnetosphere, are reaching the upper part of the atmosphere, interacting there and yielding the northern and southern lights, the "Aurora borealis" or "australis". The northern or southernmost you live at Earth, the more easily you can see auroras as they are high latitudes events only. The line of the 50 percent of nights by year, for example, where auroras are seen in the northern hemisphere, is lying North of Anchorage, Alaska, over the James Bay -south of Hudson Bay, Canada, and in northern Sweden and northernmost Finland. Continental USA, South of the Great Lakes, have -alike to northern Europe (like northern France or northern Germany) a 1-5 percent of the nights year round, as southern Europe has a mere 0.05 to 1 percent opportunity. The more the solar event generating the auroras is strong, the more the boundary moves South, or North, allowing northern and southern lights to be seen where they usually are not. These animations are showing how lively the aurora ovals are, even in a period of feeble solar activity. picture site 'Amateur Astronomy' based on pictures SEC/NOAA