Nature's Light Show

This shot comes courtesy of NASA. I love NASA! This image is from the Solar Dynamics Observatory and shows the sun's northern hemisphere during the eruption of a solar flare on Sunday. What an amazing shot! Accoring to NASA this image's colour scheme displays temperatures ranging from 1 to 2 million degrees. (Kelvin Scale). Wow! Sunday's solar activity likely marks the start of a "solar maximum" (the last of which occurred in 2001) which can be bad for satellite and radio communications but great for natural light shows. The light show I'm talking about is of course Aurora Borealis, otherwise known as the northern lights. These mass ejections of plasma and solar particles interact with Earth's magnetic field as solar particles collide with the oxygen and nitrogen atoms in our atmosphere. These collisions can result in amazing displays of colour and light. This recent coronal mass ejection (CME) was aimed toward earth and those particles will likely have made the 93 million mile trip to Earth potentially giving us an amazing light show normally visible only in the far north. This means that tonight, if conditions are clear, a green (and hopefully red) lightshow may be seen as far south as the great lakes. Let's hope that things clear up this evening!