joining us live now is astronomer andrew fraknoi with the fromm institute at the university of san francisco. hi, andrew. >> nice to be with you again. >> oh, so nice to be with you. i'm so sorry about the timing of air force one. that shortened our conversation, and i could have done a whole show on this with you. all right, all right. so real quickly, what are the northern lights? right. and why do they normally happen over the arctic circle? and why is it that this time tonight, maybe we'll get to see them down here? >> so just so we get the idea out of the way, it may not be tonight. it probably won't reach us until about 2 a.m. uh- on earth, so it's probably much better tomorrow night than tonight. we don't want your viewers going out for no reason tonight, but let me give you the big the quick background on the sun is a complicated, highly active and magnetic star, and on its surface, in its surface regions, there's a lot of magnetic energy which every once in a while can break out, flare out, and release particles and energy into space. and this generally happens on an 11 year cycle w