Solar storm brings the Northern Lights to the northern US

[Judi Lynn]

By Stephanie Pappas about 5 hours ago



The northern lights could heat up the next couple of nights during a strong geomagnetic storm. Here, the brightness and location of the aurora is shown as a green oval centered on Earth’s magnetic pole. The green ovals turn red when the aurora is forecasted to be more intense. (Image credit: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center)

A strong solar storm is creating aurora-friendly conditions as far south as Pennsylvania, Iowa and Oregon this week.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center, the sun released two coronal mass ejections (CME) on Nov. 1 and Nov. 2. CMEs are eruptions in the sun's atmosphere that blast a magnetic field into space — and in this case, toward Earth.

When these magnetic disruptions hit Earth's upper atmosphere, they can cause geomagnetic storms. These storms are capable of disrupting satellite communications and other electronics. They also cause particles in the magnetic field surrounding Earth to emit light, creating the ethereal show known as the aurora.

The aurora, also known as the northern or southern lights, usually stays at high latitudes, near the poles. But a strong solar storm can make the phenomenon visible further south. According to Sky News, the latest geomagnetic disturbance brought views of the aurora to skywatchers across the United Kingdom. Aurora sightings were also reported on Oct. 3 in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Montana, Wisconsin and New England.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/geomagnetic-storm-aurora-november

[littlemissmartypants]

1. Thank you. ❤

[2naSalit]

2. K&R

Last edited Thu Nov 4, 2021, 10:29 PM - Edit history (1)

Might be able to see it this time.



ETA: And I guess not unless the big cloud that showed a little while ago moves on to some other location. And it's unbelievably windy this evening too. Sounds like a bad storm out there right now.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. Alas, I am too far south, in New Mexico, to see this.

I spent my first fourteen years in northern New York State, a bit above Utica, NY. In the 1950s there was minimal light pollution, and where we lived about twelve miles north of Utica, we had extremely dark skies. It fostered my interest in astronomy, and is in no small part why my son is now in a PhD program in astronomy. Hooray for him!

But more to the point, I had the amazing good fortune to spend my early life in dark skies. We also had lots of nights with the aurora borealis, the northern lights. I saw them many times. Some forty years later, my husband and I were in Minneapolis on a vacation. One night, as we got out of our rental car to go into our motel room, we looked up and saw a rather peculiar sort of lights. I said, "Oh, that's the northern lights." My husband said no, I said yes, he said no, and I repeated yes. I'd seen this kind of thing many times before. The conversation ended with him not believing me.

The next morning the local paper had a full page headline saying something like "Rare occurrence of Northern Lights in Minnesota."

I was vindicated.

I currently live in Santa Fe, NM, and have reasonably dark skies, lucky me.