Aurora Borealis tonight

[Sakura]

Is anyone going out to see the Northern Lights tonight? They are visible in quiet a few places both tonight and last night. I believe last night there was a higher chance of seeing them but they have upgraded the chance of seeing them tonight to as likely as last night. I read people were able to see them as far as the Bahamas last night. 

Tonight's forecast is showing most places in Canada and the upper parts of the U.S.

Per one of the meteorologist though:
"The Northern Lights will be visible again tonight with the same Kp index of 9 just like last night. Last night's G4 (Severe) Geomagnetic Storm Watch was upgraded to a G5 (Extreme). A G5 Geomagnetic Storm Watch has been issued for tonight as well."

 

He also goes on to say the best time to view will be between sunset - 11 PM EST. So is anyone going out to try to see them, or did go out last night? I have seen reports of them being seen all over Sweden/Denmark/The UK/ lower U.S regions and down to the Bahamas so there might be a good chance for a lot of people to see them! ~ 
I'm personally going out with some friends around 10 PM outside of the city away from the lights to see if we are able to see anything since it's on my bucket list to see the Northern Lights. I like in Chicago so it's likely I might be able to catch a glimpse of them. Going to try anyway! 

[efaardvark]

2 hours ago, Sakura said:

Is anyone going out to see the Northern Lights tonight?

I saw that!  *3* X-class flares!  One was a 5.8!  Several smaller as well.  Nothing Carrington level but there ought to be some good aurora displays not just tonight but all through the weekend and even into next week.  The sunspot activity that has been causing them will have moved to the other side of the sun after that but there could even be a repeat when it comes back around.

Unfortunately I'm in Southern California - and in a highly light-polluted urban area besides - so I'm unlikely to be able to see anything interesting.    I told my brother in Wisconsin though.  Last time he got some good pictures.

[efaardvark]

14 hours ago, efaardvark said:

I'm unlikely to be able to see anything interesting.

Aaaand I didn’t.  Between the latitude, the light pollution, and a bit of haze or fog I could barely even see any stars. Never mind any aurora.

Anyone else have better luck?

[Zeref]

I went with Sakura to see them last night. We went farther North in Illinois in the country away from lights of the city and was able to see this well enough. Although this is not a new thing for me as I grew up in Northern Finland we see this all the time and sometimes very bright where it is all the way across the sky in many different colors. Seeing it made me feel slightly homesick for Finland. 

[Sakura]

21 hours ago, efaardvark said:

I saw that!  *3* X-class flares!  One was a 5.8!  Several smaller as well.  Nothing Carrington level but there ought to be some good aurora displays not just tonight but all through the weekend and even into next week.  The sunspot activity that has been causing them will have moved to the other side of the sun after that but there could even be a repeat when it comes back around.

Unfortunately I'm in Southern California - and in a highly light-polluted urban area besides - so I'm unlikely to be able to see anything interesting.    I told my brother in Wisconsin though.  Last time he got some good pictures.

I heard you could see them tonight too but I was looking at the Aurora forecast and it doesn't look like we would be able to see them well here so I probably won't try again. We did get to see them last night though and it was really cool! We had to drive pretty far out away from the city though, about 45 minutes outside of Chicago up further North to the middle of nowhere lol. Worth it though. 
When is that supposed to come back around and be visible again?

 

3 hours ago, Zeref said:

I went with Sakura to see them last night. We went farther North in Illinois in the country away from lights of the city and was able to see this well enough. Although this is not a new thing for me as I grew up in Northern Finland we see this all the time and sometimes very bright where it is all the way across the sky in many different colors. Seeing it made me feel slightly homesick for Finland. 

Ya I would really like to go to where you are from and see them ~ the pictures I have seen from there are so amazing. 

[efaardvark]

1 hour ago, Sakura said:

When is that supposed to come back around and be visible again?

That's a bit of a tricky question.  Best guess is that the alignments will again start to become favorable(?) sometime next week.  Maybe Wednesday/Thursday? 

TL;DR version..

This is all being driven by a huge sunspot, "AR3664".  The sunspot itself is 15x as wide as Earth and it is positioned on the sun at a place that is periodically magnetically aligned with the Earth.  The sunspot is very active and throwing off huge flares.  Sometimes the flares detach and become giant coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that escape the sun.  If one or more of these CMEs escape when it is at that perfect spot then the charged particles of the CME follow the magnetic field lines and hit the Earth.  That's what causes these auroral displays, among other things.

Of course the sunspots are on the surface, and the sun rotates.  On average the sun spins on its axis once every 25 (Earth) days at the equator and once every 36 days at the poles.  Additionally the sun's surface is not solid and moves around as the sun spins.   The sunspots themselves drift around and come and go as well.  The magnetic field lines that are associated with the sunspots flow out from the sun and get all twisted around by all these different motions, following the so-called "Parker Spiral" that was recently discovered by the Parker Solar Probe.  That makes prediction of the trajectory of CMEs and their effect on Earth a bit like predicting Earth weather.

I usually follow spaceweather.com for this sort of thing.  Spaceweather had this to say:
 

Quote

 

... CMEs emitted by the departing sunspot are no longer flying toward Earth. At most only glancing blows are likely from eruptions on May 12th through 14th.

The danger could return on May 15th, however. On that date the sunspot will pass through a region of the sun magnetically connected to Earth via the Parker Spiral. Subatomic debris (protons and electrons) from explosions on May 15th and 16th could spiral back to Earth and rain down  ...

 

 NOAA also has a very good site, especially if you're a science nerd.

Edited May 13, 2024 by efaardvark

[Sakura]

6 minutes ago, efaardvark said:

That's a bit of a tricky question.  Best guess is that the alignments will again start to become favorable(?) sometime next week.  Maybe Wednesday/Thursday? 

TL;DR version..

This is all being driven by a huge sunspot, "AR3664".  The sunspot itself is 15x as wide as Earth and it is positioned on the sun at a place that is periodically magnetically aligned with the Earth.  The sunspot is very active and throwing off huge flares.  Sometimes the flares detach and become giant CMEs that escape the sun.  If one or more of these CMEs escape when it is at that perfect spot then the charged particles of the CME follow the magnetic field lines and hit the Earth.  That's what causes these auroral displays, among other things.

Of course the sunspots are on the surface, and the sun rotates.  On average the sun spins on its axis once every 25 (Earth) days at the equator and once every 36 days at the poles.  Additionally the sun's surface is not solid and moves around as the sun spins.   The sunspots themselves drift around and come and go as well.  The magnetic field lines that are associated with the sunspots flow out from the sun and get all twisted around by all these different motions, following the so-called "Parker Spiral" that was recently discovered by the Parker Solar Probe.  That makes prediction of the trajectory of CMEs and their effect on Earth a bit like predicting Earth weather.

I usually follow spaceweather.com for this sort of thing.  Spaceweather had this to say:
 

 NOAA also has a very good site, especially if you're a science nerd.

Ahh okay I thought it would be a long time ~

"The size of 15 Earths"  Geez that kinda really puts into perspective how large the Sun is. I often forget since it's not something I think about much after high school. So I have read these can cause problems with radio/satellites/GPS all kinds of things, what are the odds of one ever doing major damage? I have been reading some people chatting in a Discord this past week about how a large enough one could shut down the internet and every thing else for weeks or months and send the world into chaos but I have to wonder how likely that is to happen. 

I usually check NOAA a lot when I want to know things like this as I presumed they are pretty reliable but I won't even pretend to know or understand all the Science behind it though I do find it fascinating once someone explains it all to me  

"The historic geomagnetic storm of May 10-11, 2024, produced auroras across Europe, Asia, Japan, Mexico, and all 50 US stetes--even Hawaii. Hundreds of millions of people saw the colored lights for the first time in their lives."
^ I think this is pretty cool that it was able to be seen in all of these places. I heard this on TV as well that people saw it as far away as the Bahamas and down into Mexico and things. It seems like there was a lot of activity for this lately too, more than I have ever heard about in my life. 

[efaardvark]

4 hours ago, Sakura said:

I have been reading some people chatting in a Discord this past week about how a large enough one could shut down the internet and every thing else for weeks or months and send the world into chaos but I have to wonder how likely that is to happen.

At any given time there's an extremely low probability of any damage from one.   If they're big enough then they can certainly cause huge amounts of damage but the last really big one to hit the Earth was back in 1859 and was called the Carrington event.  We've seen quite a few of these types of CME's thrown off by the sun that have missed the Earth so we know they exist and we've studied them enough to have quantified their properties so we know what they're capable of.  Fortunately the bigger they are the less common they are and nothing that big has hit the Earth in modern times.  We'd also have a bit of warning.  Spacecraft like SOHO, ACE, and STEREO (and the upcoming SWFO) are designed for this.  They're the ones that are currently (or will be, in the case of SWFO) feeding the data to the NOAA "space weather" site.  Maybe we'd only get a few hours or a couple days notice, but that's enough time to shut down and disconnect important bits of infrastructure in an orderly manner.

That said, in my own lifetime I remember in 1989 there was a big power outage in Canada caused by a large CME.  It wasn't nearly as powerful as the Carrington event but it was still very disruptive to power and communications even back then.  This was before things like the internet and smartphones and AWS.  I can only imagine what it would be like today.  We still haven't implemented a lot of the lessons learned from back then in today's infrastructure either. 

A physics textbook will tell you that changes in magnetic fields can effect changes in electric currents in wires, and vice versa.  Things like motors in electric vehicles and generators in hydroelectric plants are possible because of this.  In a motor or generator the wire carrying the electric current is all wound up in a compact coil, and the coil is shielded by the structure of the device, which generally only lets the electrical field interact with magnetic fields also within the device.   But a straight wire is also subject to the same physics.  If you have a long wire in a fluctuating magnetic field then the field can create an electrical current in the wire.  The magnitude of the electrical current is directly related to the length of the wire and the rate of change in the magnetic field.

There are many instances of very long wires exposed to the geomagnetic field in the modern world.  A power transmission line or a phone line are a couple of examples.  They are electrically insulated against things like short circuits but they're not shielded from magnetic fields and these wires are embedded in the earth's magnetic field along with everything else on earth.  Normally this is not a cause for concern because the Earth's magnetic field is pretty stable.  The Earth's magnetic field usually doesn't change much, or at least not quickly, so any effect from the geomagnetic field is normally manageable.

That can change if a CME hits the Earth's magnetic field.  The main cause of damage from CMEs is secondary effects from the huge, rapid fluctuations in the magnetic field caused by the charged particles when they hit the Earth's magnetosphere.  This affects a large geographic area.  When the magnetic field lines surrounding a power or communications cable that is hundreds or thousands of miles long start to change rapidly it can generate huge electrical currents in the cable.  The ends of these cables will be connected to things like power plants, homes and offices, and communications centers.  These currents would be far more than the equipment is designed to withstand and might go on for minutes or hours.  In severe cases the induced currents can generate more power than the wires themselves can handle, in which case the wires will overheat, melting insulation and/or the metal wires themselves, and causing short circuits and fires.

This last is what happened in 1859.  Hundreds of miles of telegraph wires laid out between cities across the world channeled large electrical currents into the equipment at telegraph offices.  Batteries overloaded and exploded, wires overheated, electrical arcs injured people and started fires, etc.  Generally the damage was limited however.  This was long before computers and even household electricity.  Electric lightbulbs didn't even exist until the 1870s, and most homes weren't wired for electricity until the early 1900s.  There just wasn't that much infrastructure around to be affected, electrically speaking.  In today's high-tech world I think there is far more potential for damage, and the damage would be far more expensive and it would take much longer to repair or replace it all. 

If a Carrington-level CME hit the Earth these days it would immediately cause widespread power outages as circuit breakers tripped.  Some circuit breakers would not be fast enough however, in which case the equipment power lines are connected to would be damaged and would have to be replaced before service could be resumed.  Electrical arcs could damage or destroy nearby equipment as well.

Things like datacenters would also be very vulnerable.  They're connected to the power grid like everything else of course.  They're also typically at the hub of a web of long-distance communications wires and the communication equipment is used to dealing with well-behaved low-voltage communications signals, not megawatts of unmanaged power coming down those wires at them.

Satellites would also be affected.  Communications systems that are used to dealing with faint data transmissions would likely be damaged or destroyed by induced electrical surges far beyond what they'd been designed for.  Satellites in space would also be directly affected by the radiation of the CME.  That radiation can penetrate to the computer chips and do things like scramble memory and disrupt the programs that are controlling the spacecraft.

The other, and I think bigger problem with a Carrington-level CME event would be the sheer scale of the damage to the electrical, computing, and communications infrastructure.  It's bad enough if one power plant or a particular datacenter goes down even temporarily.  This would likely be a big event, geographically speaking.  Bigger by far than something like an earthquake or a hurricane/typhoon.  A large number of power plants, transmission lines, communications hubs, and data centers worldwide would be damaged and taken offline within minutes or hours of each other.  A lot of the damaged or destroyed equipment would likely be very expensive and the inventory available for immediate replacement thereof would be limited.  There are some high voltage, long distance power transmission transformers that would probably be vulnerable for instance but they're very expensive, they take months to build, and there's only a few dozen of them in use in the whole US.  How big is the replacement inventory for that sort of thing?   How many replacement GPS satellites could be quickly launched, especially if half the world's long distance power lines were down, along with the power plants and communications centers they'd been connected to?  How long will it take to rebuild all the datacenters when most of the destroyed equipment will not be available from existing stock in warehouses and will have to be manufactured anew?  Will the factories even be able to function to produce the replacement equipment?  Some level of basic service could probably be restored relatively quickly, but rebuilding all of it could easily take months or even years.  Some level of chaos would also be a quite likely outcome, and there's the question of if our bozo "leaders" in government would be able to effectively manage that chaos and the recovery efforts without creating even more problems.

Edited May 13, 2024 by efaardvark

[Zeref]

14 hours ago, Sakura said:

 

Ya I would really like to go to where you are from and see them ~ the pictures I have seen from there are so amazing. 

When I return to visit family you can visit with me. 

 

8 hours ago, efaardvark said:

Fortunately the bigger they are the less common they are and nothing that big has hit the Earth in modern times.  We'd also have a bit of warning.  Spacecraft like SOHO, ACE, and STEREO (and the upcoming SWFO) are designed for this.  They're the ones that are currently (or will be, in the case of SWFO) feeding the data to the NOAA "space weather" site.  Maybe we'd only get a few hours or a couple days notice, but that's enough time to shut down and disconnect important bits of infrastructure in an orderly manner.

This is very good to know there would be enough warning to be able to shut down what would be needed to in order to prevent a lot of damage to happen. 

 

8 hours ago, efaardvark said:

 Some level of basic service could probably be restored relatively quickly, but rebuilding all of it could easily take months or even years.  Some level of chaos would also be a quite likely outcome, and there's the question of if our bozo "leaders" in government would be able to effectively manage that chaos and the recovery efforts without creating even more problems.

Anywhere in any country I don't think leaders would have it together enough to effectively manage and handle an event on that level properly and it is concerning to know they are not really prepared to do it. If food and water was available I think it would stop a lot of chaos from happening and perhaps be something similar to what I read of the 2003 Northeast blackout in America. 

[Sakura]

20 hours ago, efaardvark said:

At any given time there's an extremely low probability of any damage from one.   If they're big enough then they can certainly cause huge amounts of damage but the last really big one to hit the Earth was back in 1859 and was called the Carrington event.  We've seen quite a few of these types of CME's thrown off by the sun that have missed the Earth so we know they exist and we've studied them enough to have quantified their properties so we know what they're capable of.  Fortunately the bigger they are the less common they are and nothing that big has hit the Earth in modern times.  We'd also have a bit of warning.  Spacecraft like SOHO, ACE, and STEREO (and the upcoming SWFO) are designed for this.  They're the ones that are currently (or will be, in the case of SWFO) feeding the data to the NOAA "space weather" site.  Maybe we'd only get a few hours or a couple days notice, but that's enough time to shut down and disconnect important bits of infrastructure in an orderly manner.

That said, in my own lifetime I remember in 1989 there was a big power outage in Canada caused by a large CME.  It wasn't nearly as powerful as the Carrington event but it was still very disruptive to power and communications even back then.  This was before things like the internet and smartphones and AWS.  I can only imagine what it would be like today.  We still haven't implemented a lot of the lessons learned from back then in today's infrastructure either. 

A physics textbook will tell you that changes in magnetic fields can effect changes in electric currents in wires, and vice versa.  Things like motors in electric vehicles and generators in hydroelectric plants are possible because of this.  In a motor or generator the wire carrying the electric current is all wound up in a compact coil, and the coil is shielded by the structure of the device, which generally only lets the electrical field interact with magnetic fields also within the device.   But a straight wire is also subject to the same physics.  If you have a long wire in a fluctuating magnetic field then the field can create an electrical current in the wire.  The magnitude of the electrical current is directly related to the length of the wire and the rate of change in the magnetic field.

There are many instances of very long wires exposed to the geomagnetic field in the modern world.  A power transmission line or a phone line are a couple of examples.  They are electrically insulated against things like short circuits but they're not shielded from magnetic fields and these wires are embedded in the earth's magnetic field along with everything else on earth.  Normally this is not a cause for concern because the Earth's magnetic field is pretty stable.  The Earth's magnetic field usually doesn't change much, or at least not quickly, so any effect from the geomagnetic field is normally manageable.

That can change if a CME hits the Earth's magnetic field.  The main cause of damage from CMEs is secondary effects from the huge, rapid fluctuations in the magnetic field caused by the charged particles when they hit the Earth's magnetosphere.  This affects a large geographic area.  When the magnetic field lines surrounding a power or communications cable that is hundreds or thousands of miles long start to change rapidly it can generate huge electrical currents in the cable.  The ends of these cables will be connected to things like power plants, homes and offices, and communications centers.  These currents would be far more than the equipment is designed to withstand and might go on for minutes or hours.  In severe cases the induced currents can generate more power than the wires themselves can handle, in which case the wires will overheat, melting insulation and/or the metal wires themselves, and causing short circuits and fires.

This last is what happened in 1859.  Hundreds of miles of telegraph wires laid out between cities across the world channeled large electrical currents into the equipment at telegraph offices.  Batteries overloaded and exploded, wires overheated, electrical arcs injured people and started fires, etc.  Generally the damage was limited however.  This was long before computers and even household electricity.  Electric lightbulbs didn't even exist until the 1870s, and most homes weren't wired for electricity until the early 1900s.  There just wasn't that much infrastructure around to be affected, electrically speaking.  In today's high-tech world I think there is far more potential for damage, and the damage would be far more expensive and it would take much longer to repair or replace it all. 

If a Carrington-level CME hit the Earth these days it would immediately cause widespread power outages as circuit breakers tripped.  Some circuit breakers would not be fast enough however, in which case the equipment power lines are connected to would be damaged and would have to be replaced before service could be resumed.  Electrical arcs could damage or destroy nearby equipment as well.

Things like datacenters would also be very vulnerable.  They're connected to the power grid like everything else of course.  They're also typically at the hub of a web of long-distance communications wires and the communication equipment is used to dealing with well-behaved low-voltage communications signals, not megawatts of unmanaged power coming down those wires at them.

Satellites would also be affected.  Communications systems that are used to dealing with faint data transmissions would likely be damaged or destroyed by induced electrical surges far beyond what they'd been designed for.  Satellites in space would also be directly affected by the radiation of the CME.  That radiation can penetrate to the computer chips and do things like scramble memory and disrupt the programs that are controlling the spacecraft.

The other, and I think bigger problem with a Carrington-level CME event would be the sheer scale of the damage to the electrical, computing, and communications infrastructure.  It's bad enough if one power plant or a particular datacenter goes down even temporarily.  This would likely be a big event, geographically speaking.  Bigger by far than something like an earthquake or a hurricane/typhoon.  A large number of power plants, transmission lines, communications hubs, and data centers worldwide would be damaged and taken offline within minutes or hours of each other.  A lot of the damaged or destroyed equipment would likely be very expensive and the inventory available for immediate replacement thereof would be limited.  There are some high voltage, long distance power transmission transformers that would probably be vulnerable for instance but they're very expensive, they take months to build, and there's only a few dozen of them in use in the whole US.  How big is the replacement inventory for that sort of thing?   How many replacement GPS satellites could be quickly launched, especially if half the world's long distance power lines were down, along with the power plants and communications centers they'd been connected to?  How long will it take to rebuild all the datacenters when most of the destroyed equipment will not be available from existing stock in warehouses and will have to be manufactured anew?  Will the factories even be able to function to produce the replacement equipment?  Some level of basic service could probably be restored relatively quickly, but rebuilding all of it could easily take months or even years.  Some level of chaos would also be a quite likely outcome, and there's the question of if our bozo "leaders" in government would be able to effectively manage that chaos and the recovery efforts without creating even more problems.

Yeah I'm also glad to know we would have a warning at least ~ even a couple hours is enough hopefully to prepare. I wonder if they would inform the people it was going to happen though or if we would all just be kinda in the dark about what was going on. However a bit disturbing to know we haven't taken any lessons from past events to help prevent further major events from happening >_>
Hmm I guess that is why I have also read a lot of newer cars will shut down and be unable to run in the event of a solar flare hitting the Earth. Of course I figured GPS wouldn't work but I'm glad I know an ancient skill called "reading a map"  We are pretty much dependent on electronic things today though so I can see how all of that becoming non-operational would pretty much devastate us for however long it would take for it to all get repaired and come back up. 
I feel like "some level of basic function could be restored relatively quickly" probably means to plants or businesses that need it and not to the normal every day person which likely means most of us would be living in the dark ages again for a while lol ~ I guess I imagine something like "The Purge" movies happening and everyone just taking to the streets after a couple of days and doing whatever they wanted. I don't really have any faith in the competency of the government to be able to handle any such situation.. I don't even have any faith in them handling current situations let alone something like that x.x 

[efaardvark]

15 hours ago, Zeref said:

the 2003 Northeast blackout in America

I think that was the one caused by a software bug that didn't allow an alarm to ring when a power line overloaded.  Eventually something overheated and shut down, taking the power with it.  It must have sucked to be in someplace like New York for that.

3 hours ago, Sakura said:

I guess that is why I have also read a lot of newer cars will shut down and be unable to run in the event of a solar flare hitting the Earth. Of course I figured GPS wouldn't work but I'm glad I know an ancient skill called "reading a map"

In a solar flare situation I think cars would be ok.  Maybe not if they're plugged in and charging though.  The damage from a flare is caused by the power surges created in long wires.  If it was just the car then I think it'd be ok.  You're probably thinking about something like an electromagnetic pulse from a high altitude nuke going off.  That's similar but the difference is that it is massively more powerful.  The "E1" component of a nuclear blast absolutely can destroy electronics.  The "E3" component can interact with the magnetic field similar to the way a solar flare does and produces a lot of the same effects as a solar flare.  A solar flare doesn't have anything like E1 or E2 however, just E3, so it's a lot less likely to do the sort of damage a bomb would.

As for maps.. I was in my late 20s when the WWW was invented.  Google maps didn't come along until I was almost 40.  If I wanted to get anywhere the only options were Thomas Guides and Rand McNally Road Atlases.  I hear they're collectors' items these days.   

(Unfortunately I threw my last Thomas Guide away decades ago.  This is probably why I'm still working on my first $million.  I throw away old stuff like that instead of keeping it for 40 years and selling it on ebay.  Then again if I'd kept it all I'd probably have wound up being featured on that TV show "Hoarders".)

Edited May 14, 2024 by efaardvark

[Zeref]

7 hours ago, efaardvark said:

I think that was the one caused by a software bug that didn't allow an alarm to ring when a power line overloaded.  Eventually something overheated and shut down, taking the power with it.  It must have sucked to be in someplace like New York for that.

 

Yes I read it was caused by a software company in Ohio. I only meant that there was not a lot of riots in the Northeast blackout I don't think I remembered reading about any of it happening, people remained calm despite the situation so possible for people to remain calm if an event happened that took things offline or caused more power outages presuming food and water were available. 

[Sakura]

16 hours ago, efaardvark said:

I think that was the one caused by a software bug that didn't allow an alarm to ring when a power line overloaded.  Eventually something overheated and shut down, taking the power with it.  It must have sucked to be in someplace like New York for that.

In a solar flare situation I think cars would be ok.  Maybe not if they're plugged in and charging though.  The damage from a flare is caused by the power surges created in long wires.  If it was just the car then I think it'd be ok.  You're probably thinking about something like an electromagnetic pulse from a high altitude nuke going off.  That's similar but the difference is that it is massively more powerful.  The "E1" component of a nuclear blast absolutely can destroy electronics.  The "E3" component can interact with the magnetic field similar to the way a solar flare does and produces a lot of the same effects as a solar flare.  A solar flare doesn't have anything like E1 or E2 however, just E3, so it's a lot less likely to do the sort of damage a bomb would.

As for maps.. I was in my late 20s when the WWW was invented.  Google maps didn't come along until I was almost 40.  If I wanted to get anywhere the only options were Thomas Guides and Rand McNally Road Atlases.  I hear they're collectors' items these days.   

(Unfortunately I threw my last Thomas Guide away decades ago.  This is probably why I'm still working on my first $million.  I throw away old stuff like that instead of keeping it for 40 years and selling it on ebay.  Then again if I'd kept it all I'd probably have wound up being featured on that TV show "Hoarders".)

 

Oh yes that was it, a high altitude nuke, I got it confused, my brain is too fried this week  I remember watching a documentary on what would happen if something like that went off in America. 
I don't remember which maps we used when I was younger but I remember having road maps and atlases in the car lol and we would use those when traveling from one part of the country to another. I never would have thought atlases would be worth money though so I probably would have trashed that as well. 
Ah that s how Hoarders is scary sometimes, I've seen bits of it but the houses and bugs in them always makes me want to turn the channel 

[efaardvark]

The ESA has a good graphic on how "space weather" affects things on, in, and around Earth.

Things have been quiet this week but there's a new sunspot group on the horizon - literally.. right on the edge of the sun - that has already been seen to throw off some strong M-class flares.  Nothing like last week's series of X-class flares has definitely been attributed to AR3685 but something emitted an X-class flare seen emerging from behind the sun's limb a few days ago.  AR3685 is the most likely candidate.  We'll have to see what it looks like next week when it swings around to point at Earth.

In the meantime, here's a short move of a CME blowing the tail off a comet.  The sequence of frames is from the STEREO-A spacecraft, taken a few years ago.  (STEREO-A is the surviving member of a pair of spacecraft that was designed to take 3D images of solar events.  Communication with "B" was lost in 2016 so no more 3D pics but "A" can still be used to monitor the flares and the solar wind.. and take these sorts of pictures.)

Edited May 18, 2024 by efaardvark

[Sakura]

5 hours ago, efaardvark said:

The ESA has a good graphic on how "space weather" affects things on, in, and around Earth.

Things have been quiet this week but there's a new sunspot group on the horizon - literally.. right on the edge of the sun - that has already been seen to throw off some strong M-class flares.  Nothing like last week's series of X-class flares has definitely been attributed to AR3685 but something emitted an X-class flare seen emerging from behind the sun's limb a few days ago.  AR3685 is the most likely candidate.  We'll have to see what it looks like next week when it swings around to point at Earth.

In the meantime, here's a short move of a CME blowing the tail off a comet.  The sequence of frames is from the STEREO-A spacecraft, taken a few years ago.  (STEREO-A is the surviving member of a pair of spacecraft that was designed to take 3D images of solar events.  Communication with "B" was lost in 2016 so no more 3D pics but "A" can still be used to monitor the flares and the solar wind.. and take these sorts of pictures.)

 

Did this new sunspot cause some Aurora activity earlier this week? I saw a couple people posting pictures over Lake Michigan not that far from where I am of faint Aurora lights earlier in the week, it was nothing like over the weekend but it was still some pretty colors. 

Oh wow you can actually see it very well in that gif  That looks awesome. 

[efaardvark]

17 hours ago, Sakura said:

Did this new sunspot cause some Aurora activity earlier this week?

No, this one hasn't been in the right position to throw things at Earth yet.  In fact it has been on the opposite side of the sun for the past couple/few days so it hasn't even been visible.

That must have been from last week's sunspot activity.  Or it might have been normal aurora activity.  My brother lives near the Great Lakes in Wisconsin and he says he can see the northern lights from his place.  Not always, but if the viewing conditions are good he says they're fairly common.

[Sakura]

7 hours ago, efaardvark said:

No, this one hasn't been in the right position to throw things at Earth yet.  In fact it has been on the opposite side of the sun for the past couple/few days so it hasn't even been visible.

That must have been from last week's sunspot activity.  Or it might have been normal aurora activity.  My brother lives near the Great Lakes in Wisconsin and he says he can see the northern lights from his place.  Not always, but if the viewing conditions are good he says they're fairly common.

Ah okay I see. I'm not sure what kind of normal activity there is around here, since I live right smack in the city center of downtown Chicago. In order to see anything you usually have to drive a  bit out of the main city because there is too much light pollution to see anything from the lake shore downtown here. 

[Zeref]

On 5/19/2024 at 9:08 PM, Sakura said:

Ah okay I see. I'm not sure what kind of normal activity there is around here, since I live right smack in the city center of downtown Chicago. In order to see anything you usually have to drive a  bit out of the main city because there is too much light pollution to see anything from the lake shore downtown here. 

I was thinking when we move I wonder if we will still be able to see them? I think we will be too far South at the point anymore but I have seen articles of it being visible there in more darker areas. 

[Sakura]

7 hours ago, Zeref said:

I was thinking when we move I wonder if we will still be able to see them? I think we will be too far South at the point anymore but I have seen articles of it being visible there in more darker areas. 

I have hope but I don't think on normal occasions we will be able to in Kentucky lol But ya I did have family that did see them there in this recent one but wayyyy out in the country away from the main city and I'm not sure about Louisville. 

[Zeref]

14 hours ago, Sakura said:

I have hope but I don't think on normal occasions we will be able to in Kentucky lol But ya I did have family that did see them there in this recent one but wayyyy out in the country away from the main city and I'm not sure about Louisville. 

Perhaps this won't be as much different than Chicago then whereas we had to go further outside of the city to see the lights well here as well. 

[efaardvark]

Just when you thought it was safe, here comes that super-active region 3664 swinging back around towards Earth again.    This last week has been relatively uneventful (unless you're into VHF/UHF radio comms or a GPS-dependent farmer trying to plant this year's crop) but it looks like things are picking up again.  We'll have to see what next week's forecast looks like.  Might get another good auroral display in the next week or two.

[Sakura]

1 hour ago, efaardvark said:

Just when you thought it was safe, here comes that super-active region 3664 swinging back around towards Earth again.    This last week has been relatively uneventful (unless you're into VHF/UHF radio comms or a GPS-dependent farmer trying to plant this year's crop) but it looks like things are picking up again.  We'll have to see what next week's forecast looks like.  Might get another good auroral display in the next week or two.

That would be awesome! I was hoping for some more activity before I move further South where it will be harder to see it as often I think, and I am moving in 2 weeks so I didn't have much longer to hope for ;-; 

[efaardvark]

This is not my KSP game.   

 

[Sakura]

8 hours ago, efaardvark said:

This is not my KSP game.   

 

Wowwww I love the view of it from space. It would be so awesome to see it in person from that angle. 

[efaardvark]

So what happens if you set off a nuke in space close to the earth?  If you said "Godzilla" then good guess, but you would unfortunately be incorrect.    What you do is get a lot of power and communication outages and some out-of-place auroral displays.