Aurora Borealis

The Aurora Borealis of Monday, October 24^th, 2011

This message arrived in my mailbox at 6:30pm local EST:

CME IMPACT: A coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth's magnetic field on Oct. 24th around 1800 UT (2 pm EDT).  The impact strongly compressed our planet's magnetosphere and may have exposed geosynchronous satellites to solar wind plasma.  Mild to moderate geomagnetic storms are possible in the hours ahead as Earth's magnetic field continues to reverberate from the hit.  Sky watchers in Scandinavia, Canada, and northern-tier US States should be alert for auroras, especially during the hours around local midnight.

I had just finished a sequence of shots of the Sun, and have included one below:

      Photo by John O’Neal, Lunt Solar Hydrogen Alpha Scope and Orion Video Camera

As you can see there is an active area pretty well centered on the disk and in a prime location for a direct hit, should a CME occur.

Immediately thereafter, apps on my iPhone started firing warnings as well. I blew them off, since the warning was issued for high lat observers. I went to work and didn’t think much about it until I received an alert from Channel 3 News. They said that there was a mysterious red cloud being reported by local callers. This was immediately followed up by an image of bright Aurora that was sent in by an observer in Doylestown, Ohio.

I ran outside but saw nothing, so I called Mike Harkey and told him to keep his eyes open tonight. Then I started searching around. I found dozens of reports so I ran back outside. Did my eyes deceive me or is the entire northern sky glowing a deep green? I walked to a position to block the lights and realized that this was green aurora.

I quickly called Dave Gulyas and said something like “Aurora, get your camera, I’m at work, take pictures for me. Hurry!” He responded with, “OK”,  CLICK!

 3 images by Dave Gulyas

Dave commented: “Got a call from a good friend (N8NCK) that there was an event in progress. Unprepared, I went out and took these shots. Canon 50D, Tokina 11-16/2.8@11mm, 10 to 15 seconds. First time since 2003 that aurora was visible in Ohio. Each time it's an amazing, never forget moment.”

Then I called Len Jezior and asked him to use the new impromptu callup he’s been working on. Unfortunately, it’s not ready yet. (Get with Len and get him your info.) Maybe next time the system will be in place and all our members can get a call….

Anyhow, the green glow continued to grow in size and intensity until the entire northern sky from ground level to about 20 degree was intense green. Then the streamers began. Rising upward from the green base

came green spires, which 

 Photo above by Len Jezior

quickly began turning red. Soon there were full blown curtains waving in the breeze while rippling east to west, then west to east in seemingly random and rapid fire fashion. A bright piercing white shaft ran straight up through all this, looking almost like a spotlight, but I knew it wasn’t because it didn’t extend to the ground, and it appeared to be pulsing in a manner that’s hard to describe. At this point I realized that I had my iPhone, which has a camera, so I fired a quick pic. It’s not much, but all I have, and, I think, quite impressive, considering it’s a phone camera and I was standing in the middle of a field surrounded by football stadium lights…

Then, 3 extremely bright red amorphous blobs appeared about 60degrees above the horizon. They began to expand and soon covered the curtains. They also extended to zenith. Looking north, the entire sky was bright red. Vertical striations began to appear in the “RED CLOUD” and then it began dimming, shimmering as it faded.

Then the curtains began to fade. The bright spotlight shaft remained bright until the curtains faded. Then the spire began pulling in on itself and in scant seconds the sky was as dark and black as it had been 15 minutes beforehand.

                                                                  Photo by John O’Neal       

               

I think I stood there in the darkness another 15 minutes replaying the events over and over, trying to firmly commit the awe inspiring events of the last few minutes to long term memory…. Finally I went back inside and here’s what I found on the Spaceweather page:

AURORAS IN THE USA: A coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth on Oct. 24th at approximately 1800 UT (2:00 pm EDT). 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.

Indeed, the display spread all the way down to Arkansas. "When I saw the alert, I ran outside and immediately saw red auroras," reports Brian Emfinger from the city of Ozark. "Within a few minutes the auroras went crazy! Unbelievable!"

Auroras were seen or photographed in more than half of all US states including Alabama,Wisconsin, New Mexico, Tennessee, Missouri,Illinois, Nebraska, Kentucky, North Carolina,Indiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Maryland,New York, Montana, Ohio, Colorado,Pennsylvania, Washington, Minnesota, Maine, Michigan, Oregon, Arkansas and California. Many observers, especially in the deep south, commented on the pure red color of the lights they saw. These rare all-red auroras sometimes appear during intense geomagnetic storms. They occur some 300 to 500 km above Earth's surface and are not yet fully understood.

 Again, these transient events happen occasionally and/or rarely. There’s no time to publicize them.If you want to be notified with a phone call, text message, ims, twit, or some other form of electronic communications, get your info to Len Jezior. He’ll add you into the system and then you can decide if you want to go back to sleep or go outside and see the event of the decade…. 

Meanwhile, keep your eyes on the skies!

Astronomically, John O'Neal