Post by Owen on Oct 14, 2023 8:04:24 GMT
1 ~~~ How to Watch the Northern Lights and Other Awesome Auroras
When the sun gets feisty, Earth’s atmosphere can literally light up. But seeing the resulting aurora isn’t always easy
Imagine standing under the starry vault, bundled against the cold, when the sky erupts overhead. Rippling curtains, ribbons and streamers of colors across the rainbow light up the night, shimmering and majestic and all eerily silent.
That’s what it’s like to see a vivid auroral display, and being able to witness one for yourself is getting more likely every day. The sun’s been getting feisty lately, blasting out flares of radiation and burps of gas that can wash over Earth. This uptick in solar outbursts—which is an expected part of our sun’s activity cycle—boosts the chances for the occurrence of the aurora borealis, or northern lights, in the Northern Hemisphere. (In the Southern Hemisphere, the phenomenon is the aurora australis, or southern lights.) Beautiful, fantastic and still in many ways mysterious, these dancing multihued displays tend to be visible only at high latitudes, but in recent weeks they have been spotted in the Northern Hemisphere as far south as Virginia!
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www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-watch-the-northern-lights-and-other-awesome-auroras/
13 October 2023
When the sun gets feisty, Earth’s atmosphere can literally light up. But seeing the resulting aurora isn’t always easy
Imagine standing under the starry vault, bundled against the cold, when the sky erupts overhead. Rippling curtains, ribbons and streamers of colors across the rainbow light up the night, shimmering and majestic and all eerily silent.
That’s what it’s like to see a vivid auroral display, and being able to witness one for yourself is getting more likely every day. The sun’s been getting feisty lately, blasting out flares of radiation and burps of gas that can wash over Earth. This uptick in solar outbursts—which is an expected part of our sun’s activity cycle—boosts the chances for the occurrence of the aurora borealis, or northern lights, in the Northern Hemisphere. (In the Southern Hemisphere, the phenomenon is the aurora australis, or southern lights.) Beautiful, fantastic and still in many ways mysterious, these dancing multihued displays tend to be visible only at high latitudes, but in recent weeks they have been spotted in the Northern Hemisphere as far south as Virginia!
+
www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-watch-the-northern-lights-and-other-awesome-auroras/
13 October 2023