{"id":142976,"date":"2026-01-21T10:34:19","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T10:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/142976\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T10:34:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T10:34:19","slug":"northern-lights-seen-in-northern-california-the-mercury-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/142976\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern lights seen in Northern California \u2013 The Mercury News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Peyton Headlee<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kcra.com\/article\/placerville-stargazers-northern-lights\/70054773\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Click here for updates on this story<\/a><\/p>\n<p>PLACERVILLE, Calif. (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kcra.com\/article\/placerville-stargazers-northern-lights\/70054773\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">KCRA<\/a>) \u2014 A few dozen people made their way to the Placerville Observatory on Monday night, hoping to catch a rare glimpse of the Northern Lights, which were visible only through a camera lens.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe came over here to see the aurora and see if we can try to see it like through our phones, and we\u2019ve been seeing it like, through waves, and it\u2019s been really pretty,\u201d 11-year-old Evelyn Strange said. \u201cIt was just like reddish pinkish and it was really light.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The observatory, located away from city lights and above the fog line, offered a prime location to attempt to view the Northern Lights.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s rare to see the aurora down this far south,\u201d Raj Dixit of the Sacramento Valley Astronomical Society said. \u201cI, quite frankly, thought I might never see them during my own lifetime unless I was willing to pony up for a trip to Norway or Alaska or Iceland or Finland. Normally, you have to go to the Arctic Circle.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The aurora was spawned from a coronal mass ejection, known as a CME, which created a strong geomagnetic storm in Earth\u2019s magnetic fields.<\/p>\n<p>The-CNN-Wire<br \/>\u2122 &amp; \u00a9 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Peyton Headlee Click here for updates on this story PLACERVILLE, Calif. (KCRA) \u2014 A few dozen people&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[46403,7,9,8,181,100],"class_list":{"0":"post-142976","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-astronomy","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-california-headlines","11":"tag-california-news","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}