We went to the MacDonald Observatory a few years back, literally two weeks before the tremendous fires some of you might remember, fires that burned hundreds of thousands of acres, much of it around the observatory. While we weren't able to stay until dark, a scientist there was showing live video of the sun from one of the telescopes in a small auditorium. So we're sitting in chairs staring at the sun on a large screen, which was a real trip, when the lecturer suddenly gets excited. "I can't believe you are all so lucky. That's a significant solar flare happening right now! This rarely happens when we're doing these, and this is the biggest flare I can remember seeing while we have an audience." He pointed out what we were seeing, but didn't really understand. Played back the cool parts at different speeds, explaining things. It was far out! Just a great place to visit. We'll be going back one day and will make sure to stay until dark. The tour is very cool. What a great job it must be to work at a facility like that, doing research.
Powerful solar storm sparks stunning aurora around the world A severe solar storm created a stunning display of light in the night sky over parts of the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand early Wednesday morning, spotted by those lucky enough to be awake in the wee hours. Both the aurora borealis and the aurora australis were sparked by a particularly strong solar storm that sent charged particles toward the Earth, said CNN meteorologist Todd Borek. "When these particles bombard the Earth's magnetic field in the upper atmosphere, the collision often creates brilliant colors," Borek said. "Most of the time, auroras appear green -- when these particles collide with oxygen in the atmosphere -- but there were reports this past aurora australis also appeared to have a reddish tint, which suggested the collision with high-altitude oxygen was also seen on Earth." link
Timelapse of New Zealand on St Patrick's Day, yesterday <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5_gJy2-6u70?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
In 2012 there was a CME that was more powerful than any previously recorded -- it was fortunately aimed away from earth, but had it hit us it would have been devastating. This is the most powerful that has hit earth... The solar storm of 1859, also known as the Carrington event,[1] was a powerful geomagnetic solar storm in 1859 during solar cycle 10. A solar coronal mass ejection hit Earth's magnetosphere and induced one of the largest geomagnetic storms on record. The associated "white light flare" in the solar photosphere was observed and recorded by English astronomers Richard C. Carrington and Richard Hodgson. Studies have shown that a solar storm of this magnitude occurring today would likely cause widespread problems for modern civilization. The solar storm of 2012 was of similar magnitude, but it passed Earth's orbit without striking the Earth.[2] On September 1–2, 1859, one of the largest recorded geomagnetic storms (as recorded by ground-based magnetometers) occurred. Aurorae were seen around the world, those in the northern hemisphere even as far south as the Caribbean; those over the Rocky Mountains were so bright that their glow awoke gold miners, who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning.[4] People who happened to be awake in the northeastern US could read a newspaper by the aurora's light.[5] The aurora was visible as far from the poles as Cuba and Hawaii.[6] Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases giving telegraph operators electric shocks.[7] Telegraph pylons threw sparks.[8] Some telegraph operators could continue to send and receive messages despite having disconnected their power supplies.[9] wiki
<iframe src="https://vine.co/v/Ol07zxv9LwJ/embed/simple" width="600" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe><script src="https://platform.vine.co/static/scripts/embed.js"></script> Another big solar eruption.
Someone get Murph the cheat sheet so she can find that formula for gravity. Then we can finally leave Earth and live in space.
