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Epic Geomagnetic Storm Erupts
astroengine writes "On Monday, at around 2 p.m. ET, a coronal mass ejection (CME) slammed into the Earth's magnetosphere. For a short time (between 3:06 p.m and 3:11 p.m. ET), energetic solar wind particles penetrated as deep as geosynchronous orbit — home to hundreds of communication satellites. As a consequence, a geomagnetic storm is underway, generating bright aurorae across very low latitudes."
Adds reader dtmos, quoting from Spaceweather, which also has a beautiful photo gallery: "'The impact strongly compressed Earth's magnetic field, directly exposing geosynchronous satellites to solar wind plasma, and sparked an intense geomagnetic storm. As night fell over North America, auroras spilled across the Canadian border into the contiguous United States.' Aurora were seen as far south as Baileyton, Alabama."
If this had been posted YESTERDAY some of us might have gotten up early to see those Aurorae
pending committee review
I live in a rural area with little light pollution and where I can clearly see the milky way - and it was quite a sight. All I'll say is that when you see it the first time, unprepared as I was, it can be disconcerting and even alarming. You know something powerfully primitive is occurring, not normal; I imagine like an animal responding to a forest fire.
Sounds about as epic as 17500000000000000000 h2o molecules striking your face, in a raindrop.
http://www.spaceweather.com/aurora/gallery.html:
2000: the most powerful geomagnetic storm since 1989 sparked Northern Lights as far south as Florida
2001: There are many dates when Northern Lights were sighted as far south as Texas, Florida, Arizona--even Mexico
2002: Another date of note: April 19 when Northern Lights descended as far south as California
2003: Auroras appeared in Florida, Texas, Australia and many other places where they are seldom seen
2004: Northern Lights descended as far south as California during an extreme geomagnetic storm
2005: sparking auroras from Alaska to Antarctica and many rare places in between [including California - follow the link]
2006: The best display occured on Dec. 14th when a coronal mass ejection hit Earth, sparking Northern Lights as far south as Arizona.
That webpage only goes from 2000-2006, so yes, they DO happen that often.
Yesterday was the opening of the Mid-Atlantic Star Party near Robbins, NC.
While we were getting gear set up yesterday afternoon someone had a C-11 with a white light filter and a Solarmax 60 riding piggy back.
Both showed a TON of activity on the sun - filaments, sun spots, and some huge prominences. Little did we know we would get a solar show after dark!
About 9:30 PM EDT the transparency was good but seeing was still soft. When we wondered who threw on a big light to the north of the field - all of a sudden everything got bright up there.
Since aurora's are so uncommon this far south, it took us a minute to figure out what was going on.
It gave us a really nice show and rose up fairly high between Cassiopeia and Polaris with another large band pushing up west of Polaris.
We had sheeting red with some green pillars shooting up. There were about 75 of us just standing around the observing field, slack-jawed with the occasional ohhh and ahh =-)
A couple folks got on their cell phones and we had observers all around central NC out and reporting visual confirmation from their locations.
We had a very solid show for about 20 minutes with residual lower level observations coming and going for probably another 20 minutes.
Quite a remarkable start for a star party! =-)
"Murderer? Well, that's a harsh word. I prefer to think of myself as a Mortality Technician."
Seriously, the telecomms are sloooowly moving on fiber-optic lines. Should have been serious starts on that years ago as a backup to satellites at the very least. One super-epic flare and kiss those satellites good bye, no matter how hardened they are, and they will take months if not years to completely replace. What do you do in the meantime? Oops?
On the plus side, though, all the spy sats in the world would also be fried. Always a silver lining....
>Run away
It is cold and dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.