Northern Light Alert!

[Paleophyte]

I just saw some truly spectacular northern lights out my back 40! We currently have an extreme geomagnetic storm, produced by the first of seven solar flares (so far) en route from a very active region on the sun. Two of the ones today were very large (X3 and an X5 that popped off while I was out watching). Keep your eyes on the sky for the next few nights as we are likely to have a lot more sky show! Go out and look even if you don't normally see northern lights at your latitude. They're getting reports of these from Mexico!

More info available from SpaceWeather.com



Sadly, not my photo.

[Deesse23]

Mexico????????

[Gwaithmir]

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately, the weather will be cloudy and rainy here for the next few days. 

[Paleophyte]

Mexico????????

Northern Mexico and Puerto Rico and Puerto Rico have reported sightings. This is what it looked like in Florida, at 27.4 degrees North:

[Dānu]

My sisters asked if I wanted to go look at the Northern Lights last night, but it was close to bedtime so I declined. I saw them enough when I was growing up.

[Paleophyte]

OK, TL;DR: This is the biggest, brightest display of northern lights in the last 20 years and it's still going! If you're reading this stop reading this and go look!

Spoiler Alert: This probably isn't the end of civilization. This is unlikely to produce a Carrington Event not withstanding the hyperbollox being bandied about the nuttier parts of the interweb. I've watched storms bigger than this before and only one of those, a truly impressive show in 1989, even scuffed the power grid.

Over the last few days the sun has unleashed a fusilade of flares from the monstrous active region 3664 (see below). All have been powerful, with the largest, rated at X 5.9, popping off while I was watching the show last night. At least six of these have Earth-directed components. The Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), blasts of plasma ejected from the sun by the flare, are what produce most of the northern lights and typically take 2 to 3 days to make the journey to our planet. 

The first of these arrived last night round about the time the sun was setting over the Rockies, sparking the strongest geomagnetic storm in 20 years with northern lights sighted south of the 30th parallel. @Aliza Get your ass out and look up! This event is very much not done yet! The storm peaked at a G5 (the scale caps out at 5), briefly "subsided" to G4, and is back to G5 as of this writing. The CMEs that are still en route are almost certain to further energize the ongoing storm and produce spectacular northern lights for the rest of the weekend. More interestingly, some of the more powerful flares have likely produced faster-moving CMEs that will overtake and consume their slower-moving brethren. These "cannibal CMEs" combine, producing complex knotted magnetic fields within the plasma that can be very energetic and interact with Earth's magnetosphere in truly spectacular ways.



AR 3664 is rotating away from Earth but has already sent numerous CMEs our way.

[Paleophyte]

On a less technical note, here's what my adventures of last night included.

A friend mentioned to me that some of her online communities were going nuts about the "giant solar flares" headed to wipe all life from the planet, so I went to check just how silly they were being. Slightly less silly than usual as it turned out, but that's not saying much. The NOAA aurora forecast heat map was bright red over me and I whooped, grabbed my friend, and headed out to find a spot away from urban light pollution.

We settled on a dark stretch of road outside Halifax Stanfield International Airport (44.9 degrees North). We had green and red curtains across the entire sky with a slim crescent moon setting in the west. This was all accompanied by a chorus of Spring Peepers. We also had jumbo jets landing like UFOs straight out of Close Encounters and the ISS flew over at 11:20, with another satellite on a parallel orbit, likely something on a chase orbit that was docking or departing. Oddly, the northern lights that I saw last night were much less active than other shows that I've seen. Perhaps this is because they were taking up the entire sky and getting in each others' way. I've seen a lot more motion in much smaller displays.

Sadly, I hadn't figured out the "nightvision" settings on my cameraphone yet and didn't get any pictures worth a damn. My friend was better prepared and got some spectacular photos. I'll share them here when I get ahold of them.

If you go to SpaceWeather.com and see an auroral prediction that's full of ruby red like this current one go out and look up!

[Deesse23]

My cousin send me pics of Aurora Borealis from Vilnius, Lithuania, 54° 41′ N. I am at 50° N. Gonna look out later tonite.

[brewerb]

My electric toothbrush wouldn't work this morning. Coincidence...................... I think NOT!

[AutisticWill]

I live in Indiana; I couldn't see anything. I looked around at 12am and 1am. Nothing. Clear skys, too.

[Paleophyte]

I live in Indiana; I couldn't see anything. I looked around at 12am and 1am. Nothing. Clear skys, too.

Odd. That's pretty much the prime time to see them. Here's a photo from Ogden Dunes last night:

[skyking]

South of Seattle:
We have a lot of ambient light but do have some nice dark to the east and south.
This is what it looked like as it got dark. Something was happening.

Within a half hour you could see it. The Pixel 6 in night vision could really see it.

My fave was this nebula looking doohicky straight up.

Last pic was the same area, looking up through the 120' fir trees.


EDIT: it is on for a repeat tonight.

[SYZ]

Well I live in one of the best locations supposedly to view
the Aurora Australia, that, is in South Gippsland on the
northern coast of Bass Strait.

But, unfortunately last night and the night before the sky was
totally covered with dense, low cloud—so not even a glimpse!

Will try again tonight.    

[Cavebear]

We had cloudy rainy nights, so there was no chance I could see them. But had it been a clear night, I probably wouldn't have seen them either.

When I moved here 37 years ago, I saw the stars clearly. Not just the major constellations, but the minor ones too. I could see the Milky Way on a good night. Even could count about 6 of the Pleiades.

Those days are long gone. Light pollution and general haze have nearly eliminated seeing any stars at all. I'm surprised when I can even see The Big Dipper or Orion. In the coldest nights of Winter, sometimes I can see a planet. It is very depressing.

A friend and I went camping in Canada for a week back in the 80s. The sky was so clear and unpolluted by local lights, I could see everything! The Milky Way was bright and dense across the sky. All the constellations were bright. And I made out some I had never seen before. Seriously, if you have ever tried to see Draco, you know what I mean, LOL!

I sure miss that.

[Thumpalumpacus]

We've been under cloud cover the last three days. Hmph.

[mordant]

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately, the weather will be cloudy and rainy here for the next few days. 

Yeah in my area if the Northern Lights are visible, it's always cloudy.