We’ll probably have aurora tonight!

Wednesday, September 14th, 2005 at 12:36 PM by Juan

If you pay attention to it, you will notice that the solar activity panel on this website reports a 70% chance of aurora here in Minnesota Wednesday evening! It looks like sunspot group 808 had at least one X-class X-ray flare yesterday which propelled a coronal mass ejection (a.k.a CME) toward Earth. The animated image here shows the ultraviolet view from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite. The sun is blocked out (its size is indicated by the circle at the center of the image) and you can clearly see what looks like a smoke ring expanding away from the Sun. That is the CME that was blown off the Sun by sunspot group 808. When this CME hits Earth later this evening, the protons it carries will be driven by Earth’s magnetic field into the atmosphere causing aurora (see this article for the details). Be on the lookout for strong aurora tonight!

NOTE ADDED 8:30 PM: As of yet, no reports of auroral activity, this might be a false alarm, we will see.
ADDITIONAL NOTE ADDED SEPT. 15 To quote SpaceWeather.com:

Bad news for sky watchers: a coronal mass ejection …, hit Earth’s magnetic field this morning, but its impact did not trigger a strong geomagnetic storm. There were no widespread auroras.

A 70% change of aurora in Saint Cloud tonight!

Posted in Astronomy News, Outreach

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