Sun Storm To Cause Massive Auroral Display

glengyron writes "SMH reports a major geomagnetic storm will cause a spectacular display of shimmering coloured lights in the night sky of the Southern Hemsiphere. Read more here or check out the press release from the Australian Space Weather Agency (pdf)."

Auroras

[Scott7477]

Here's the article: Night sky spectacular November 9, 2004 - 4:42PM A spectacular light show is expected to play across Australia's southern skies as a major geomagnetic storm rages above the earth's atmosphere this week. Many-hued shimmering and moving lights should appear in the night sky in the southern half of Australia over the next two nights, the Australian space weather agency, IPS Radio and Space Services, said. Since November 3, a massive sunspot has caused several explosions on the sun's surface, which have hit the earth's geomagnetic field and caused a major geomagnetic storm. "This storm is expected to continue for the next two to three days as material now in transit from the sun interacts with the geomagnetic field," IPS deputy general manager Phil Wilkinson said. "Reports of aurora have already been received from as far north as the Siding Spring Observatory near Coonabarabran in northern NSW." As well as creating a spectacular light display, the storm is likely to disturb the earth's upper atmosphere and interfere with technological systems including short wave or high frequency (HF) radio. "HF radio remains an important tool for communications and surveillance within Australia for defence, air and sea transport and emergency service groups," Dr Wilkinson said. Satellites may be damaged and aeromagnetic surveys could be adversely affected, he said, but the activity posed no direct threat to people on earth. I guess this means all the tinfoil hat wearers in the southern hemisphere can take them off for a couple of days.

Also a good show in the Northern Hemisphere

[xmas2003]

Not too shabby looking on the top half of the globe either as mentioned by the Seattle Times which includes a picture of Puget Sound lit up very nicely. [nwsource.com]

The article says it may go as far south as Oklahoma, but I haven't seen anything yet here in Colorado, although I did see some pretty nifty Aurora Borealis over Boulder, Colorado [komar.org] last year.

Re:Also a good show in the Northern Hemisphere

[ramunas]

Well We had some nice display in Latvia as well, too bad I had to work at the time :(

Re:Also a good show in the Northern Hemisphere

[pyrote]

wow, slashdot is getting really good with up-to-date info... I spent 2 nights ago wathcing the display cover the sky here in Idaho... last time I checked that too was in the Northern hemisphere.

on a more technical note, austrailia isn't alone in all this crap. As far south as Idaho we can see aurora at the KP index of 9... as of this post, it's at 10 [noaa.gov].

Re:gods fucking damnit.

[thegrassyknowl]

Well, for what it's worth, the one time I might actually be able to see an aurora, I'm happily located in the said Southern Australian region ;)

I'll tell you all how great it was tomorrow...

But that said, this is the kind of news that makes reading slashdot worthwhile. I wouldn't have even known about this otherwise, until it was all over and the pictures were on the 5pm news (which I always miss), or my HF radio stopped working.

Yay!!!

Re:gods fucking damnit.

[merdark]

Umm. It happened on Sunday night. It was all over the news Monday and Tuesday. Slashdot is so late to this story that the Aurora is likely gone already.

Re:gods fucking damnit.

[thegrassyknowl]

Which is a right bugger... And here I was hoping to see something. Good thing a particularly nasty coding problem kept me locked indoors and not outside wasting my time.

Re:gods fucking damnit.

[nelsonal]

You might try looking up tonight, we've had pretty good shows since Sunday in the US (as far south as Nebraska). Hopefully you'll get lucky tonight.

Re:gods fucking damnit.

[RhettLivingston]

The shows here made it much further south than Nebraska. People in North Carolina and Tennessee were also reporting sightings.

Re:gods fucking damnit.

[Tsalg]

Either sign up on the Aurora Alert mailing list [alaska.edu] or keep an eye on the realtime Kp index [noaa.gov] wherever you are. If it's night where you are now and you're not in the middle of a bloody thunderstorm then gtf out and look for auroras.

And if you're willing to pay $4.95 per month for it you can get the information brough to you by subscribing to the spaceweatherphone [spaceweatherphone.com]

Have fun down under - I heard you guys raise to hell and descend to heaven.

Here are some pics

[Per Wigren]

This is what the sky looked like for a few minutes in Sweden yesterday: Norrsken [aftonbladet.se]

Personally I missed it, but I've seen the phenomenon 100s of times before because I'm initially from the middle/north parts of Sweden. It's really beautiful and surrealistic when it's constantly moving and morphing like an Amiga-demo plasma-effect in the sky. ;)

Saw a neat aurora display on Sunday...

[feidaykin]

I've lived here [yahoo.com] in Wisconsin all 23 years of my life, and on Sunday I saw the most impressive display of northern lights I've ever witnessed. The phenomena isn't unheard of here, but still rather uncommon. Sunday night's view was almost unbelievable, though... A huge patch of the sky was glowing, stretching nearly horizon to horizon. Being a bit of an astronomy buff, I love times like this because it ignites interest in the topic. Even among nerds, it seems interest in astronomy is sporadic at best... and among non-nerds, it's amazing how little even highly intelligent and educated people know about basic astronomy. I suppose the media doesn't help much since they get things wrong half the time. I've seen several TV shows say that seasons are caused by Earth's distance from the Sun... heh, guess "axis" is too hard a concept for the media? Maybe it's not a politically correct word... ;)

Actually, I enjoy talking with people that are clueless about astronomy because they tend to be the ones that show the most interest once they realize just how mysterious the universe is... Go astronomy!

Looked Good in Michigan!

[madstork2000]

I saw the lights early this morning (~2AM 11/10/2004).
I've been in southern Michigan for 30+ years. This was the first display I have witnessed. Quite an impressive site (so much so that I woke my wife up and made her watch them too.)

-MS2k

Re:Looked Good in Michigan!

[CAlworth1]

Nice! I'm am going to school in south-west michigan (Kalamazoo). I looked last night, but saw none.

Sunday night, however, I wastched from around 11pm until 2 am, and, being a native of northern MinnesOHta, I am used to some pretty cool displays, but I have never seen anything like what I saw sunday. Nearly the entire sky was lit up green. It got a lot darker around 1, but the patterns started shifting quicker too.

Re:Looked Good in Michigan!

[Darth_brooks]

I can't believe that you missed the display two years ago. That blew this one away.

A buddy of mine was at Eastern Michigan's observatory for the night and took a crap load of pictures. This was the only one I could find (not linked in an effort to save what little bandwidth they've got)

http://www.physics.emich.edu/sherzer/AuroraDome. jp g

I saw a GLOWING RAINBOW at 2:00 AM

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in southern Wisconsin. My niece called around 8:00 Sunday night to tell me about the show. When I went outside, I didn't see much -- just a diffuse band of light.

But then I went outside again after midnight, and it was GLORIOUS. The whole northern half of the sky was lit up and flickering, ligh a neon sign on the fritz. I actually saw a RAINBOW. Around 2:00 AM, for less than a minute, I saw a glowing, red-yellow-green display low in the northeast.

This isn't the first time I've seen the aurora, but