Coronal Mass Ejections CMEs 10.2011

October 24th Coronal Mass Ejection Puts On An Auroral Show

Re-posted courtesy of Spaceweather.com on 10.25.2011

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.

“Wow, wow, wow! These were the best Northern Lights I’ve seen since 2004,” says Shawn Malone, who took this picture from the shores of Lake Superior in Michigan:

“The auroras filled the sky in every direction–even to the south,” he says.

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! It was unbelievable.” Update: Emfinger has assembled a 2h 22m time-lapse movie of the display: 29 MB wmv.

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, Virginia, Texas, Arizona, 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.

The storm is subsiding now. Nevertheless, high-latitude sky watchers should remain alert for auroras as Earth’s magnetic field continues to reverberate from the CME impact. Aurora alerts: text, voice.

NEW: October 2011 Aurora Gallery
[previous Octobers: 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2004, 2003, 2002]

Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet, although astronomers are finding new onesall the time.

Notes:LD means “Lunar Distance.” 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256 AU. MAG is the visual magnitude of the asteroid on the date of closest approach.

NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center

Atmospheric Optics

Solar Dynamics Observatory

STEREO

Solar and Heliospheric Observatory

Daily Sunspot Summaries

Heliophysics

Science Central

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