Last night a neighbor sent out an email with a photo of the northern lights that she had taken from her backyard.
Mrs. Paco and I went outside and took a gander, and the northern sky was indeed lit up with a rosy glow. This is the first time in our lives we ever saw this phenomenon.
Those are quite the view up north -- when I was in Alaska, I'd watch them dance across the sky. Looked like a massive laser show. Glorious!
ReplyDeleteNerd time:
This is from a hit by two coronal mass ejections (CME) from the sun -- they hit yesterday, and the resulting geomagnetic storms will be around through tonight.
This plays havoc with high frequency radio signals. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.
The website spaceweather.com tracks this stuff.
Like I said ... ...
DeleteThe solar flare triggered radio blackouts on the African and European continents and disrupted high-frequency communication on Earth's sunlit part.
My morning HF radio nets were bad to no contact.
https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2025/11/11/NOAA-solar-strongest-sun-flare-radio-blackout-Europe-Africa/7651762881694/
Wow. I would love to see the northern lights, but every single celestial event is the trigger for southwest Ohio to cloud up.
ReplyDeleteThe Northern Lights will get more common, because Global Warming is causing the sun to get hotter by more than 1.5 degrees, leading to more storms on the sun.
ReplyDeleteIt's settled science!
Same thing happened in western Sydney. My town of Penrith reported very similar lights and that had never happened in anyones memory. We however were on a trip and missed them
ReplyDeleteMy sons wife had the oppurtunity to go Europe free of charge her mother is paying. She felt guilty leaving 3 young kids with him for 2 weeks but he insisted Highlight of the trip was a cruise on the Queen Mary to Norway with the possibilty of seeing th northern lights, she is still there and hasn't seen any lights due to cloud but my son got a photo of the southern ones from his porch late Wednesday night. He hasn't told her yet.
That's cool. I've never seen them.
ReplyDeleteThe Aztecs saw them once, they figured the gods were mad so they sacrificed thousands.
So... what are you doing this weekend?