There’s nothing quite like the disappointment when a promising CME fizzles out, or when clouds obscure the sky during a magnificent aurora display (we feel for you in the Pacific Northwest!) Experienced aurora chasers point out that such fickleness is part of the excitement, and that’s true! The reason that the question “when can I[…]
A summary of a groundbreaking new paper by Dr. Michael Hunnekuhl and Dr. Liz MacDonald, published in Space Weather with open access: “Early Ground-Based Work by Auroral Pioneer Carl Størmer on the High Altitude Detached Subauroral Arcs now known as STEVE.” In 2018, STEVE took the world by (solar) storm. The quirky little subauroral arc[…]
Over the past decade, Aurorasaurus has grown from a persistent idea in the mind of Dr. Liz MacDonald to a worldwide initiative that has contributed research and discoveries to aurora science. At its heart, Aurorasaurus is a community effort, only possible through the contributions of thousands of citizen scientists, scientific experts, team members and volunteers.[…]
For the first time, scientists had ground and satellite views of Steve. Scientists have now learned, despite its ordinary name, that Steve may be an extraordinary puzzle piece in painting a better picture of how Earth’s magnetic fields function and interact with charged particles in space. The findings are published in a study released today in Science Advances.
Thank you to those of you who contributed to auroral science in 2015! We’re excited to share some highlights of what we all collectively saw last year in the skies based on when you reported “Yes, I saw aurora!” Thanks for reporting through our form on our website – the answers you submit to each[…]
For hundreds of years, aurora sightings have left people intrigued – for both their beauty and unpredictability. In any moment, they can surprise us as bright flashes of light in the night sky, dark above us. They appear like unexpected gifts, made of colorful swaths of light, dancing above us. In a dance that sometimes looks more like[…]
We looked at how Twitter can provide a picture of when, and from where, an aurora can be seen. This study showed that the number of aurora-related tweets correlated well with several different “geomagnetic indices”.
