Ålesund, Norway Northern Lights Anders Olav Bjorkavag via SpaceWeather.com

If you saw it firsthand then you had no choice but to notice it, but for the rest of us who weren’t so lucky, here’s the deal: yesterday a coronal mass ejection, a.k.a. a CME, a.k.a. a solar storm or a huge burst of solar wind emanating from our sun slammed into our atmosphere at about 2 p.m. EDT. That mass of charged particles compressed Earth’s magnetic field and sparked a pretty intense geomagnetic storm, resulting in what you see here: breathtaking auroras that are usually confined to high latitudes spilled out across North America, reaching as far south as New Mexico and Alabama.


Click to launch the photo gallery

That’s pretty far south. SpaceWeather.com reports this morning that auroras were visible last night in more than half of U.S. states, an extreme rarity. Photographers submitted stunning pics to SpaceWeather from such unlikely locales as Tennessee, Kansas, Arkansas and Oklahoma. In the Deep South--a region unaccustomed to taking in the northern lights--skygazers reported seeing rare deep red auroras that only occur during serious geomagnetic storms and are poorly understood.

All that adds up to a special occasion for most of us in the lower 48 who never get to see even a wisp of an aurora, much less a dazzling display like those that were reported nationwide last night. If you missed it, you can still catch a glimpse of last night’s fireworks via the gallery link above.

[SpaceWeather]

11 Comments

At first glance you may think unrelated.
But if you read it all you may think differently, later.

http://www.greatdreams.com/2012.htm

wow. the only the thing the sun's recent unusually violent activity that is enjoyable by us, and my one chance to aurora, and I WAS ASLEEP. Damn!

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why learn from your own mistakes, when you could learn from the mistakes of others?
“The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible” -Albert Ein

So, what happen to the solar forecasting? How did this one slip through the loop? I wonder if there will be another light show tonight and what would the best time to see it be?

The Single Dimensional Pipeline of Universal Information

1. The universe through all of time is information.

2. Particles are a group of positive bit values, in a single dimensional array of bits, traveling at independent relative speeds.

3. The observable third dimension is not the native interpretation of the universe.

4. The third dimension perception is an evolutionary trait that gave species a genetic advantage.

5. All information moves within a single dimensional pipeline in the same direction with the speed of light being the maximum speed of information.

6. Quantum entanglement is the observable effect of information in the past affecting a specific bit of information in the future.

7. All bits of information travel forward in time as they would in space, with the single bit of information that is furthest forward in the future being the keystone bit, giving cause for the maximum speed of information, for which without the universe would collapse.

8. Black holes are the result of a build up of dense information inside the single dimensional pipeline of universal information.

9. The space between these information densities is the rate of their occurrence within the single dimensional pipeline of universal information.

10. Black holes can be observed natively on the single dimensional pipeline of universal information as a comet would be observed within the third dimension.

11. As a positive bit of information approaches an information density, its rate of travel, or speed/energy, is reduced to the rate of the collective information density.

12. Life in the third dimension has evolved to understand space/time as the rate of occurrence between two bits of information on the single dimensional pipeline of universal information.

13. Light waves in the third dimension are perceived when two bits of information come into contact with the retina, originating from a radiating source in the past on the single dimensional pipeline of universal information.

14. The intensity of light in the third dimension is perceived as the net effect of a radiating information density in the past traveling and colliding with future information densities, for which the event is perceived as a waveform or oscillation, on the single dimensional pipeline of universal information.

15. Each time a single bit of information in the past comes into contact with a single bit of information in the future, the speed/energy of the single bit of information that is in the past is shed, in the amount of its full speed/energy divided by the golden ratio, and added to the single bit of information in the future, on the one dimensional pipeline of universal information.

16. When the universe's keystone bit, which is the final bit of information in the sequence, makes contact with the bit of information in the past, the keystone's speed/energy is shed in the amount of its full speed/energy divided by Pi, for which the speed/energy that it sheds is used to create a new bit of information at the beginning of the universe, thus an infinite loop of information is formed and further expands with each successive beat, its total energy being forever constant.

17. The grand architect's method for creating life, which is according to his blueprint, is to modify the universal heartbeat from its mouth, where the keystone comes into contact with the start of the universal pipeline, it is in this method that by the word of the lord the heavens were made and all the host of them came forward by the breath of his mouth, in which the process is described in ancient wisdom as the Ouroboros.

SolomonSinclair,
You’re redundant. You post that frequently.

@cosmic

Wonderful story. It's not exactly a page turner, but I did reach the point just before the Uranus/Pluto Conjunction. The story should have something concerning the current administration though, wouldn't you agree?

I mean, the Bush Family is set for whatever either way. We have to see how the Obama Administration might try to screw over the masses for the sake of the safety of Michelle, the girls, and Bo.

Or maybe he Danny Glover in real life.

To think 2012 would have been a lot better a movie if it focused more on the misconceptions of solar and astrophysics and less on the so called "Earth Crust-Displacement Theory."

As far as the view of the galatic center, maybe, just maybe, Earth is not the center of the galaxy, or the universe, and we are inclined to the galactic center because objects in space, while uniform, are not robotically uniform in motion, hemispherical, and orbital inclination.

All of the jovian outter worlds and the Kuiper Belt Objects (Pluto, Haumea, and Makemake) all have inclined hemispheres and orbits that increase with each ones respective distance from the sun (ex. Makemake, the farthest Kuiper Belt object of dwarf planet status, has a damn near 75 degree inclination on the solar plane compared to Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars' zero degree inclination).

I can go on with the inconsistencies, but I find I enjoy this story illegitimate romances between John Cusack and Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Thandie Newton.

What it's missing is a Woody Harrilson cameo. Of course this could be all based on the person who wrote this stuff in the first place. Bravo! Good show! Nut jobs!! WAY TA GO!!! Can't stop! Just go! The crowd pleads, "Gimme Some mo!"

BTW, I think the majority of the human race can agree that if death is to come preceding old age (whether singular or on a massive extinction level scale) we prefer that it come without warning. Leaves less time to contemplate your own demise if death comes without you knowing or having the time to think about it. This is why many people naysay doomsday prophesies; other than the fact that many before hand have turned out to be bogus.

@cosmic

I failed to point out, the mention that the further away certain celestial bodies tend to be from the center of a more massive body it orbits could also explain why the Earth's view of the galactic center is not in a level plane.

But sense we're in a spiral galaxy, it could just be the result of what I said earlier: celestial objects are not positioned or move in a completely robotic uniform fashion.

If you look out in space, there are stars above, beneath and on all sides of the solar system. Image the orientation of the planets around these stars compared to the Earth and other planets of this solar system.

Don't drink the Joose. It'll mess you up. So will Four Loko.

I joke, I joke. I kidd! Good story though.

hey, so amazing, just, i means, nature is amazing.
Also share something of my favourite indoor flying
http://www.theideasforgift.com/product.php?id_product=136



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