AP, etc: Sun Quiet? Not this week. Northern lights dance in Arkansas, dozens of other states’ night skies
Can this really be a pic from Ozark, Arkansas? The Associated Press ran it. It’s true. The services’s Seth Borenstein wrote it up after, he tells us, sitting on the news for a few hours to confirm it via first-hand witnesses (and thus refute a NOAA contact’s assertion it should not have been visible that far south). Borenstain, after clarifying the truth of the matter, elected to call it baffling in his lede. It appears that while the solar storm, and the CME or Coronal Mass Ejection that delivered its ions to us, were not particularly large, the blob in the solar wind moved unusually fast. Exactly why the managed to tip the aurora well across the US – Canada border appears to have no simple explanation.
There are lots of interesting pics to go with this news. One is the time-lapse satellite pic of the CME itself, departing Old Sol (click on it and, depending on your browser, you might see it larger and animated). A second, from a Spaceweather.com gallery, is from a military Earth observing satellite that monitors the circumglobal auroral oval, and caught it as it dipped into the states from Canada.
All so cool. Not many other outlets aside from the mighty AP paid a lot of att
ention. At the LA Times a lady with the right name for the job got it up as a blogpost: Deborah Netburn -Northern lights visible as far south as Arkansas. Actually, as far south as Alabama.
The show reminds one to wonder what is going on with the Sun. A year ago the news was that it had lost its spots and didn’t seem inclined to grow any new ones. There was talk of a new Maunder Minimum, like that time of tepid solar activity spanning the 17th and 18th centuriesis credited with cooling the globe’s weather for a spell. Is the Sun back on track, or still looking to be entering a relatively placid temperament? Late this last spring, Nat’l Geo‘s news service (among others) ran with that angle, via reporting by Victoria Jaggard. Maybe it’s time for an update.
Other Stories:
- Reuters – David Bailey, Greg McCune: “Northern Lights” show as far south as Atlanta ;
- Detroit News – Jim Lynch: Aurora borialis gives rare southern show ; I’ve already stuck a lot of pics on this, but at the News here’s a really spectacular one.
- Huffington Post – Timothy Stenovec: Northern Lights Travel South: Aurora Borealis Seen In Over 20 States; Lots of photos. The post is largely a mashup of material from other (credited sources), including a link to a physics explainer from the University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute.
- Indian Country Today Media Network: Aurora Borealis Appears as Far South as New Mexico ; Interesting mainly for its linked sidebar on traditional beliefs about the aurora. An additional reason to cite this brief story – looking at the site reveals another interesting one having nothing to do with northern lights: Carol Berry – For Inuits Dealing With Climate Change, Science Can Be Slow and Bumbling ; One might remark it’s not the science that is slow and bumbling, but its expression in government regulations. The real theme is the sense within some northern communities that their accumulated knowledge gets little respect from outsiders. This is a sort of story one won’t read in many other outlets.
- National Geographic: Aurora Pictures: Rare Northern Lights Seen in US South ;
Barely Related News:
- Space.com via Scientific American – Leonard David: Chinese Moon Probe Tackling New Deep Space Mission; Other than using the awkward word “repurposed,” this is a deft and professional, intriguing, granular account that reveals larger issues about the relative vigor of various national space programs. It is pertinent to this post too. China has not only directed a lunar orbiter out to the L2 Lagrange Point, a knot in the intersecting gravity fields of Earth and Sun where objects tend to hover in relative position to Earth, but among its new jobs is to help chart solar storms.
- Charlie Petit
October 26th, 2011 at 6:17 pm
Thanks for the call out, Charlie! But just to clarify, the hibernation we reported on is predicted for the *next* solar cycle, #25. The cycle we’re in now, #24, is still expected to put on a show last I heard, as evidenced by this latest round of wild auroras.
October 27th, 2011 at 11:03 am
It’s true. I talked with Judith Lean at the Navy Lab for my decadal variability feature out this week, and she said they are now forecasting magnetic activity for this cycle to be about half of #23, peaking in 2014. Most interesting to me, and I talk about this in the story, is that she said it appears activity and total brightness (irradiance) are not linearly related: even though cycle #23 had less activity than #22 and #21, the change in brightness was about the same, likely because bright faculae flare alongside dark sun spots.