Entertainment
The Northern Lights will return on New Years Eve. Heres how to view them.
Even if you aren’t planning to watch New Year’s Eve fireworks, it may still be worth looking to the skies this Tuesday. The Northern Lights are predicted to appear again this week, ringing in the new year with a spectacular natural light show over the U.S.-Canadian border. Here’s how to watch the last aurora borealis of 2024.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) has advised that the Northern Lights may be visible across many of the northern U.S. states on Dec. 31, with the display potentially persisting through to New Year’s Day. Part of the lower Midwest to Oregon might also be treated the aurora if they’re lucky, though your chances to catch it are better the further north you are.
This natural New Year’s light show is the result of activity on the Sun’s surface this weekend, including two coronal mass ejections which are expected to reach Earth. The SWPC has issued a strong G3 geomagnetic storm watch for Dec. 31, as well as a minor G1 watch for Jan. 1. According to the NOAA Space Weather Scales, a G3 geomagnetic storm may disrupt radio and satellite navigation, as well interfere with power systems.
Fortunately, such disruption is relatively minor and can be mitigated, so there’s no need to be concerned while enjoying the Northern Lights. If you’re lucky, your view might even be enhanced by a New Year’s Eve fireworks display.
How to get the best view of the Northern Lights
If you’re hoping to catch the New Year’s Northern Lights, you could just head outdoors on Tuesday night, look up, and hope for the best. Auroras can be seen from over 600 miles away when conditions are right, and it can’t hurt to at least check. However if you want to maximise your chances of seeing something spectacular, it may pay to plan ahead.
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The SWPC advises that the best time to view an aurora borealis is between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., when the level of geomagnetic activity increases. This is also when the sky is darkest, offering optimal contrast with the aurora. While the Northern Lights may technically be present while the Sun is up, they’re much harder to see against a bright backdrop.
In the same vein, minimising light pollution will help you see the aurora borealis more clearly. Certified Dark Sky Places close to the U.S.-Canadian border may have some of the best views of the Northern Lights, each location having been assessed and recognised for their minimal light pollution.
What causes the Northern Lights?
Though auroras manifest in Earth’s atmosphere, they actually originate from activity on the Sun’s surface.
When a solar flare or coronal mass ejection occurs on the Sun, plasma and magnetic field from the outermost layer of its atmosphere is expelled into space. This creates a solar wind which may travel to Earth, though it can take some time to get here. Radiation from solar flares can reach our planet in just eight minutes, while winds from coronal mass ejections can take anywhere between 15 hours and several days to arrive.
If they do reach Earth, most of these solar winds are deflected away by the planet’s magnetic field. Not all of it is bounced back into space, though. When a solar wind’s charged ion particles enter Earth’s magnetic field instead, they travel to the planet’s polar regions where said field is weakest.
There they collide with oxygen and nitrogen atoms, creating the chemical reaction which gives us the beautiful lights we know as auroras. Auroras in the Northern Hemisphere are called aurora borealis, or the Northern Lights, while those in the Southern Hemisphere are called aurora australis, or the Southern Lights.
Entertainment
Hurdle hints and answers for March 1, 2026
If you like playing daily word games like Wordle, then Hurdle is a great game to add to your routine.
There are five rounds to the game. The first round sees you trying to guess the word, with correct, misplaced, and incorrect letters shown in each guess. If you guess the correct answer, it’ll take you to the next hurdle, providing the answer to the last hurdle as your first guess. This can give you several clues or none, depending on the words. For the final hurdle, every correct answer from previous hurdles is shown, with correct and misplaced letters clearly shown.
An important note is that the number of times a letter is highlighted from previous guesses does necessarily indicate the number of times that letter appears in the final hurdle.
If you find yourself stuck at any step of today’s Hurdle, don’t worry! We have you covered.
Hurdle Word 1 hint
Mixed metals.
Hurdle Word 1 answer
ALLOY
Hurdle Word 2 hint
A popular board game.
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Hurdle Word 2 Answer
CHESS
Hurdle Word 3 hint
The edge of the beach.
Hurdle Word 3 answer
COAST
Hurdle Word 4 hint
Milk-based.
Hurdle Word 4 answer
DAIRY
Final Hurdle hint
A Spanish character.
Hurdle Word 5 answer
TILDE
If you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.
Entertainment
Moon phase today: What the Moon will look like on March 1
It’s a new month, and while the Moon may appear totally full, we’re still a couple of days away from this yet. But in the meantime, there’s still lots to spot on its surface.
What is today’s Moon phase?
As of Sunday, March 1, the Moon phase is Waxing Gibbous. According to NASA’s Daily Moon Guide, 94% of the Moon will be lit up tonight.
With just your naked eye, tonight you’ll be able to see the Mares Imbrium and Crisium, as well as the Tycho Crater. If you have binoculars hanging about, dust them off and pull them out to catch a glimpse of the Mares Nectaris and Frigoris, and the Endymion Crater. And proud telescope owners will see all this and more, including the Apollo 15 and 17 landing spots, and the Schiller Crater.
When is the next Full Moon?
The next Full Moon will be on March 3. The last Full Moon was on Feb. 1.
What are Moon phases?
According to NASA, the Moon takes about 29.5 days to orbit the Earth. Over the course of this period, it moves through eight recognisable phases, what we call the lunar cycle. While the same side of the Moon always faces us, the amount of its surface lit by the Sun changes as it continues along its path. The shifts in sunlight create the different appearances we see from Earth, ranging from a fully illuminated Moon to a thin sliver or near darkness. The eight phases are:
New Moon – The Moon is between Earth and the sun, so the side we see is dark (in other words, it’s invisible to the eye).
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Waxing Crescent – A small sliver of light appears on the right side (Northern Hemisphere).
First Quarter – Half of the Moon is lit on the right side. It looks like a half-Moon.
Waxing Gibbous – More than half is lit up, but it’s not quite full yet.
Full Moon – The whole face of the Moon is illuminated and fully visible.
Waning Gibbous – The Moon starts losing light on the right side. (Northern Hemisphere)
Third Quarter (or Last Quarter) – Another half-Moon, but now the left side is lit.
Waning Crescent – A thin sliver of light remains on the left side before going dark again.
Entertainment
Men are paying to have negative posts removed from Tea app
As reported by 404 Media, online service Tea App Green Flags will scrub negative posts from anonymous gossip app Tea and similar online forums where women post about negative experiences they’ve had with men they’ve dated.
According to 404 Media’s interview with Tea App Green Flags’ founder, simply identified as Jay, the company launched two years ago to tackle posts on the many Are We Dating the Same Guy Facebook groups. His focus has turned to Tea in the past year.
“We just want to take down posts about people who are being defamed,” Jay told 404 Media. “And when I say defamed, it means like, ‘this guy has a small penis,’ or ‘this guy smells.’ That doesn’t fit the mission statement of what the Tea app was for, which is to warn women against people who are harmful, who are abusive, who are cheaters.”
Tea App Green Flags’ site claims to have removed over 2,500 posts from the Tea App for over 759 clients. Most of the service’s clients are men, although Jay noted that occasionally the wives and girlfriends of men posted on the app will reach out.
Prospective Tea App Green Flags clients must provide their name, age, location, and photo to the service, as well links to specific posts targeting them. According to Tea App Green Flags’ FAQs, they can only remove posts with direct references to a client. On average, the site says, a Tea App “takedown campaign” will take 21 – 30 days. The lengths of other takedowns depend on the platform.
Price-wise, it costs $1.99 to report one Tea account and up to $79.99 to report 25 of them. The company also offers “24/7 Reputation Monitoring,” which costs $19.99 per month and alerts clients when they appear on Tea or Facebook.
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Jay would not share the details of the takedown process with 404 Media. Tea does have a free form for takedown requests on its website, and says that it will “only reply to takedown requests submitted via the takedown portal.”
Jay emphasized to 404 Media that Tea App Green Flags does not extend its services to people who have been accused of sexual assault multiple times on Tea, or who have been accused by one person using their real name and photo in a Facebook group.
“Sometimes we find along the process that there are pedophiles or people who actually did what they did, and they’re very bad,” Jay told 404 Media. “So we say, ‘we’re not doing this.’ We can’t take a rap for that. We’re ethical. We just want to take down people who are being defamed.”
Tea markets itself as presenting “dating safety tools that protect women.” In July 2025, it was the target of a large-scale cyberattack that exposed thousands of user images including drivers’ licenses, leaving users vulnerable to doxxing and harassment. These images were provided as verification for accounts, although the app itself is otherwise anonymous.
Jay claimed to 404 Media that Tea’s anonymity “causes a cesspool of defamation,” and that he would prefer if women shared their faces, even if they are speaking out against dangerous men who have done them harm.
While Tea is meant to be a women-only app, Tea App Green Flags is proof of men’s infiltration of these online dating spaces. (Tea itself was founded by a man: Sean Cook.)
“I have a Tea app account. I’m a dude,” Jay told 404 Media. “All my reps have Tea app accounts. They’re men.”
Mashable has reached out to Tea for further comment.
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