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Solar Storms Could Bring Northern Lights South
RedEaredSlider writes "Increased solar activity could give residents of the continental US, southern Europe and Japan the chance to see the northern lights for the first time in several years. The National Weather Service's Space Weather Prediction Center says the sun is entering a period of high activity, marked by more sunspots and a greater chance of a coronal mass ejection, or CME, hitting the Earth. That would result in auroras being visible much further from the poles than they usually are."
They wouldn't exactly be the NORTHERN lights now, would they?
Far out, man.
Hebrews 11:8
Jeremiah 33:3
Start madly flailing our arms in a haphazard way above our heads, screaming about how a CME will cause worldwide power outages, cause the end of civilization and generally revert us to either man eating cannibals, savages with funny tattoos and a general like of badly built all terrain vehicles slapped together out of junk or living under a sheet of ice a mile thick after increased solar activity somehow triggers a massive chain reaction that activates new types of particles in the earth's core and causes massive volcanic activity thus blocking out the sun?
*flails arms madly above head while running in small circles*
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
I hope we get to see them here in Oregon.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
OK, the fine article notices the trend -- the current solar cycle is starting from it's minimum, and is heading toward a maximum.
Unfortunately, it misses the fact that the magnitude of the current cycle is well below historical norms, and is below predictions
as seen in the current sunspot trends: see http://www.solarcycle24.com/sunspots.htm
Right direction, just badly off on predicted magnitude and likelihood....
Bu the world isn't supposed to end until 12-21-2012. Damn I think I see the four horsemen over the horizon. Daze is not a spelling error !!!
When I see it. I'll lay down harder money that we're entering a new solar minimum, SS counts are low, we've even had months with 0 sunspots in the last year and a half. I'll lay down that we're entering another phase on par with the dalton minimum.
Om, nomnomnom...
The key word there in that article is *could* give residents the chance to see the aurora. If you look at the chart on the Solar Cycle Progression and Prediction webpage (http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/) then you'll notice that the predicted sunspot activity and the actual activity are still very far apart. Additionally, the predicted maximum sunspot number is going to be well below the past two cycles (1991 hitting a sunspot number of 147, and 200/2001 hitting a high of 120. For this cycle, they're predicting a high of only 90 for the sunspot number, a level that hasn't been that low since the 1880's.
So while it is possible that folks south of 45 degrees latitude might see the aurora, it'll have to be courtesy of a really strong CME (coronal mass ejection) aimed in our general direction. Otherwise, it'll probably be a rather boring solar cycle 24.
I'm 64 now but when I was about 10 in Greenville, South Carolina, I saw what I thought was a beautiful glowing UFO of many colors back of my house.
I called to my dad to see and he said it was northern lights. That was the only time. Maybe soon, I'll see them again.
Having lived in interior Alaska my entire life, I can say that the northern lights are one of the least interesting large scale natural events out there. Compared to something like a nice sunset, torrential rain, or even a clear starry night, it's really not exciting. The photographs you can find about them are usually rather long exposure times, and even on the "best" nights what you see with your naked eye is no more than a green haze.
Then again, fireworks or flashing lights don't excite me either. Maybe it just takes a certain type of person to like that kind of thing.
The sun had shown a few sunspots last week... but it isn't doing anything this week.
Space Weather
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
It could snow tomorrow. It could rain tomorrow. The sun was supposed to enter a period of high activity in the past two years and it doesn't appear to be coming around to it anytime soon.
Bogus filler article. One would expect that we would be grazed by a CME and have low latitude aurorae in the near future but this simply states that it could happen.
In the Northern hemisphere it's Aurora Borealis. In the Southern hemisphere it's Aurora Australis. What's it called when it hits the lower latitudes closer to the Equator?
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I posted this earlier, figured this was an appropriate thread to post it again with some additions:
If you want a warning when auroras are likely to be occurring (so you can scurry outside and look), check out the NOAA's SWPC mailing lists. Go for the K-Index lists, and sign up for all those that apply for your location.
To figure out which minimum k-index results in visible aurora from your location, check out this helpful page; just enter in your latitude and longitude, and it'll give you your "magnetic latitude"; match that up with a k-index using the table, and you know which mailing lists to sign up for.
If your phone does email, you can get the alerts anywhere; if your phone doesn't but your provider has an email-to-sms gateway, you could just forward emails for the same effect. :)
Additional links:
So if enough people talk about this, there shall be one
Why nobody come up with technology to restore the north pole, force the northern light back ?
The north pole is changing! Every things is changing, Climate is changing ????
recently discovered tropical plants, named triffids, are being the new hot trend all across America and Europe.
Couldn't this be posted every 11 years as the solar cycle ramps up towards its peak?
I took these aurora shots in NE Montana during the low portion of the solar cycle; I'm very excited to see what more solar activity brings. I wrote this open source application to help me catch them when they occur.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This article is just so much fluff and nonsense wrapped around a little factual info. I've been in the business of space weather since the early 1970s, and this kind of sky-is-falling stuff flares up towards the front end of each solar cycle and then dies off as the sky remains stubbornly in place. Yes, we're headed into a time of increased activity, but so slowly that we may be in for a real "dud" solar cycle. Unless things start picking up soon, we may be lucky to see aurora as far south as Oregon. That said, everything could change completely in a few months. The point is that the kind of prediction made in TFA is impossible to make at this point in the cycle, and to make a big deal out of a completely unfounded prediction is both bad science and very unprofessional. This is not the fault of the poor fellow mentioned in TFA (Joe Kunches, whom I know), but of the flack who wrote this thing.
CQ DX CQ DX CQ DX
(*) The Australian Tourist Board is currently funding feasibility studies in order to increase the number of visitors to the southern (soon to be renamed "northern") hemisphere.
Why in the hell is the parent not a score 5?
Mod UP! jasnw hit the nail on the head.
Slashdot's mod system really sucks.
The Day of The Triffids started?
I thought NASA was at one point worried that two different cycles of the sun were going to hit at the same time. I also thought they had been saying that the low cycle was unusually long. Which made them worry about how far it could snap back in the other direction. Kind of like a rubber band or how no tremors for long periods make earthquakes worse because they don't let off that energy and instead store it and suddenly release it.
As long as we don't have a repeat of 1859 then I am ok with whatever happens.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090902-1859-solar-storm.html
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/06may_carringtonflare/
Another storm like that in this modern electronic age would be a nightmare.
In the early 1990s I clearly saw auroras from the middle of the Michigan State University campus, in a small US metro area of a few hundred thousand people at 42 degrees latitude (although the north magnetic pole is in North America, making the magnetic latitude higher). They aren't particularly faint. And you can see the Milky Way faintly from there too if you're not standing under a light. The astronomy people are always bitching about minor amounts of light pollution-- so much so that they risk turning off all the potential viewers. It's quite common to see the Milky Way from urban areas, as long as you aren't in the middle of Manhattan. The most important thing is to minimize glare from lights in the immediate neighborhood-- look for someplace dark and stand there for several minutes to let your eyes adjust to the low light. Bring a blanket if you live in a colder climate like I do. You can easily see a thousand or more stars in the sky, down to 4.5 or 5.0 magnitude, in places where I've seen professional astronomers claim are too light polluted. A limit of 5.5 or better is common in rural areas in populated parts of the country.
Geomagnetic storms cause DC ground currents in power grid transformers. The currents magnetically saturate the transformer cores and result in both overheating of the power system equipment and power quality problems that affect end user equipment. In the last round of geomagnetic storms (late 1980's to early 1990's) power grid transformers were damaged as far south as New Jersey. One fix discussed at that time was to switch nonlinear resistors into the transformer ground connections to limit the DC currents.
Another problem that accompanies the geomagnetic storms is disruption of wireline communications that is used for SCADA connections between field devices and control centers. Thus, just as the control centers most need to know what is happening in substations, they are blinded by the same conditions that are causing damage to the substation equipment. Transition from wireline to fiber optics can mitigate that issue.
Geomagnetic storms are a serious threat to grid reliability. Early warning is important (e.g., through satellite monitoring of solar activity), as are steps to mitigate the effects and prevent damage to equipment.
I saw some really beautiful and bright northern lights driving home from work in north swe, haven't really seen them lately that much. I remember many years ago they were quite common place, glad they are back!
If the storms are strong enough to fry a few com-sats and electric grids. The 1859 super-storm would have seriously tested our technology. The only significant use of electric grids was the early telegraphs then.
Awesome, maybe now I can blame a kitchen fire on really being Aurora Borealis.