Coronal Mass Ejection

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

On Tuesday Sunspot 930 ejected a large coronal mass. Within minutes the astronauts on a space walk were hit with the first wave. They got dosed with a full days worth of X-rays in just a few seconds. A few hours later the accelerated Proton wave hit us. All the astronauts in the space station and the Shuttle had already taken refuge in shieled areas of the space station the shuttle.

Yesterday at about 8:45am the Coronal Mass started to hit Earth. Basically it is a solar wind filled with subatomic particles and a powerfull and large magnetic field.

We, being protected by the Earths magnetosphere, are not at risk... Satiltes in low orbit are.. as are power grids and electronics from induced current.

The biggest affect that we notice.. beyond static in our electronic communications.. is the Northeren Lights. If you were outside last night and not in a city with all the light noise... WOW.

I've seen the Lights before... from the North side of the Yukon Mt.s.. but I have never seen anything like this..

I'm not a writer but I am going to try to describe it....

[phee]

Wow!!!

We did see the northern lights!!!

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

OK...

Imagine if you will...

11PM

No Moon visible

Just over my right Shoulder was Orian's belt... about 80degress fromthe southeren horizen...

To the North... from the horizen to about 35 degrees the sky is glowing a blue-white so bright I could no longer see stars... this fades out over the distance to the 45degree mark in the sky with a few stars shining throough once in a while...

From about 45degrees to about 80 degrees the sky is covered with a "blanket" of blue white ever changing light. Sometimes sections brighten to the point that it washes out the stars around it... hints of red and yellow as the upper atmoshpere heats up from the friction...

and right downthe middle... a river of light... it's about 20 degress wide... and extends just past Orian... It never goes completely dark.. but it fades in and out... Blue white fast moving... I mean really fast...

I stood in awe watching this for about an hour.. then my neck hurt to much to look up anymore...

I really wish I had a camera of some kind that couldhave captured this sight...

[Rayne]

We saw the lights around 8 or 8:30 pm off of I-96 in Brighton.

[kellygrrrrrl]

I didn't see anything last nite....

Did you notice any meteors?? I heard there was suppose to be another shower last nite!

I'm sure it was quite a show for those not in city limits!

[HipsterDufus]

I wish I had seen it.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

I didn't see any meteors at all. I wouldn't have been surprised if I had. A solar wind this strong is going to drag smaller things along with it.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/pickoftheweek/