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[Sheri]

???We watched a most amazing light show last night (Sunday, 11/7) directly overhead in the sky...Can't find anything about it on the internet. It sure looked like the northern lights although we were not looking north. There were streaks of red and white light which at first formed a pattern and then the white streaks would shoot across the sky. Amazing! Any ideas what we were seeing?

Sheri Scavo
Elmhurst, IL

[Al Degutis]

Sheri,

Yes you saw the Aurora Borealis (aka Northern Lights) last night and should be able to see them again tonight. MaryG started thread on the topic here:

astronomer.proboards23.com/index.cgi?board=Solar&action=display&thread=1099882991

It includes my reports and a link to my pictures.

[stargazer]

Just because they are called Northern Lights you can see them all over the sky while they are going on. The reason we had them last night was SunSpot #693 shotoff 7 Coronal Mass Ejections that were huge. They danced all over the sky. We had waves, curtains, streaks, it was neat.

Becky

[Sheri]

THANKS EVERYONE!!

What an amazing treat that was!

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Sheri,

I am pleased you got to see the lights in Elmhurst Illinois.

Think of the subtle lighting and nuances that could be observed, if it were not for the polluting lights of our cities. I got to see orange mercury vapor muck in my skies...although I could pretend that THEY were the auroras.

Thanks for your post in the Chicago Astronomer Forum. You will find that our knowledge base is quite extensive on various aspects in astronomy and space related fields.

Glad to see your account.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

This inquiry from Robyn...

Hey Joe I was just wondering if you know what was going on last night!!! Northern Lights? even though we are too far south. I got home from work about 1230 this morning looking up for my stars and saw these white lights shooting across the sky! Big thick ones that almost looked like spot lights but went from one end of the sky to the other and kinda waved and wiggled! It was an awsome sight and I have never seen anything like it before.

I watched it for a good 15 minutes and it just kept going. My friend who was driving home all the way to aurora said she saw them one she hit 88 she couldnt see them on 290 though cause it was too bright. Just wondering if you know what was "up" there last night. Thanks lots Robyn

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Robyn,

You have witnessed a quite rare event for us mid latitude types. It was something to be awed and marveled at and a sight not to be forgotten. The Auroras that you saw practically gave the entire United States a good view on what far northern latitudes see on a regular basis. I can't imagine that they ever become so ordinary and hum drum to the natives.

Thank you for the mail and for looking up at the stars.

[NatureDevil]

My teacher in my class at DeVry lives in Crystal Lake and she actually posted on our class forum an invitiation to come up and see it. I wish I could have taken up on that opportunity.

Joe, I think I may consider the term "orange mercury vapor muck" for use as an album title or at least a track title. I like that.

NatureDevil

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

orange mercury vapor muck

Cool! I get the first copy.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Considering the great auroral display that most of us have seen last week, and the great pics, (Thanks Al), here is an image taken from orbit of the atmospheric disturbance from Spaceweather.com...

Click on the image for a larger scale

DMSP F16 nighttime visible imagery of the northeastern USA from Nov. 8 at 0042 UTC (Nov. 7 at 1942 EST). The aurora is the light band just south of the 45°N parallel. The US Air Force DMSP satellites have a low-light visible sensor capable of detecting nighttime phenomena such as aurora, city lights, and moonlight reflecting off clouds. Image credit: Meteorological Satellite Applications Branch, Air Force Weather Agency.

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One can notice that the Chicago area was just skirted by the main curtains.

Quite a cool event all around!

[starthrower]

Actual natural processes and the processes of our imagination about aurora (and a few notes on climate).

The magnetosphere (of Earth) is the first "layer" of atmospheric bundling to come into direct contact with the Sun’s awesome power, belting it with a cosmic particle spray.

The solar wind "plasma," (the particles) some from the eruption of flares and sudden magnetic bursts, conspires to warp, bend, and ultimately penetrate the Earth’s magnetic field that is sheathing us.

The stronger the force of these eruptions, like this January, the harder-back the magnetosphere is pressed over the Earth's atmosphere. (When the forces are reduced, with little solar "wind" due to a less active Sun, our magnetosphere widens.)

The solar wind-charged particles winnowing their ways in through our polar skies and magnetosphere’s tail are then able to transfer their energy and momentum.

It is this which gives us curtains of aurora in gorgeous greens, yellows, and reds from energy given off by, for instance, the excited nitrogen and oxygen atoms of our air. They "mimic" light, these particles (or "plasma" - same meaning). Such transfers are most likely responsible for the strange and wonderful shapes this mimicry of light takes on to our eyes, as well.

These aurora can take some pretty strange shapes. In ancient times, people saw prophecies in them, such as wars, famines and the like. Some drawings from those times show ships, cannon fire, flaming swords and so on, or dripping blood. In Jacobean England, a Scottish rebel's blood was imagined to have been seen "flowing" in the sky.

We think that this is the silly imagination of primitive minds. Yet, these sorts of ionic imagery, imitating light, can be lifelike and pretty much like vessels, concrete shapes, and familiar human objects at times.

No need to worry or see the future in them, except perhaps for climate change that the Sun is forcing on Earth, if this sort of X-level flare actitivty (powerful "coronal mass ejections" and the like) keeps on over the next few decades. But even if the changes in climate do become striking, modern social planning and engineering can handle it.

How long and short these "mood swings" of the Sun last in drawn out phases for the minima (less active Sun) and maxima (more active) no one can say.

But isotopic evidence shows that the Sun changed the Earth for the much-warmer 7,000 years ago. (When the Sun is very active, LITTLE isotopic measuring sticks like Berylliium get stuck in ice cores from the "plasma", for instance. When it is NOT so active, MUCH isotopes do. Seven thousand year old samples show VERY LITTLE Beryllium for hundreds of years). Trees were growing in the far north, then, that are now mainly ice fields.

So the changes can come pretty fast.

In the 1600s, the reverse was true for almost 100 years. Climate - and human - records, show this. They also recorded a less-active Sun.

interested in more? Read my and Dr. Willie Soon's (Harvard-Smithsonian) book, The Maunder Minimum and the Variable Sun-earth Connection (on Amazon.com) or at your nearest well-stocked science library.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

St,

That was a nice read.

I have yet to see one, (I live under the Great Chicago Nebula), but hope to before I leave. It's also nice to know that other planets in our solar system also experience polar auroras. I remember seeing a movie of Saturn's aurorae.

All cool stuff and thank you for the excerpt!