Ever wonder how high an aurora occurs? Yeah, it is up there… like the clouds… or airplanes. But do you have any idea how high? Take a look at this infographic, third in a five part series, and find out what determines the altitude of an aurora. (Hint: It is surprisingly high!)
This infographic addresses how atoms and molecules in the atmosphere get excited and what that means.
The infographic discusses what colors you might see in an aurora, why this is the case and shows off some beautiful photos of the aurora taken by aurora-hunters such as yourself!
By Nathan Case and Kasha Patel On Tuesday, March 17, 2015, as people adorned themselves with green clothing and infused their livers with green beer, Earth was experiencing the biggest geomagnetic storm of the last decade—leading to beautiful, widespread aurora around world. The red, white and green St. Patrick’s Day aurora was created through a… Read More »Aurorasaurus Tracks St. Patrick’s Day storm on Social Media
By Meghan Mella In Swedish there is a phrase “himla bra” that basically means “awesomely good.” The word himla literally translates to sky or heaven, and I have to think this phrase came about from Swedes staring at the sky, admiring the goodness of the northern lights. I have been waiting and occasionally watching for… Read More »An “Awesomely Good” Aurora
By Nathan Case Ongoing, right now, is a large geomagnetic storm. The storm has had a constant G2-G4 rating, Kp levels are in the6-8 range and the solar wind power has been in the 3000GW + range for over 24 hours. All of this means, it’s a great time for aurora hunting! This level of… Read More »St. Patrick’s Day—Storm of the Decade
On October 24, 2011, a geomagnetic storm raged across Europe and the United States and caught scientists by surprise. Arrival time forecasts were off by eight hours, predicted a much weaker storm, and did not anticipate the visible red aurora emission. The inaccuracy of this forecast is fairly typical in space physics today, as… Read More »Twitter – a forecasting tool for space weather?
By Gareth Dorrian Auroras paint Earth’s sky with streaks of greens, reds, and blues— but Earth isn’t the only planet to experience this surreal luminous spectacle. Scientists have observed auroras around other planets in our solar system. Although we do not have any extra-terrestrial based Aurorasaurus users to send us their photographs, we are still… Read More »Are There Auroras On Other Planets?
The world’s largest annual gathering of space and Earth scientists just occurred. What? That wasn’t on your calendar? Really? Well okay then, lucky for you, some of the Aurorasaurus team members attended! Here’s a quick recap some of the latest space weather news unleashed at this Comic Con for space and Earth scientists. (Spoiler alert:… Read More »AGU Fall Meeting: Comic Con for Space and Earth Scientists
Hello, aurora enthusiasts! If you missed our Google hangout on Wednesday December 10, 2014 at 3pm EST, we have posted the hangout below for you to watch! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWk80wLihBE On our first Google hangout, we gave a brief overview of what an aurora is, why we collect the data from you, and present some observations of… Read More »Become An Aurora Hunter! (Google Hangout recap)