Auroras Over Ohio!

October 24, 2011

According to Spaceweather.com:

A coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth on Oct. 24th at approximately 1800 UT (2:00 pm EDT). The impact strongly compressed Earth's magnetic field, directly exposing geosynchronous satellites to solar wind plasma, and sparked an intense geomagnetic storm. As night fell over North America, auroras spilled across the Canadian border into the contiguous United States.

Locally, reports of aurora started coming in.  Phil Zito of Jackson, Ohio, saw a beautiful show from his dark sky location near the Lake Katherine State Nature Preserve and sent out the word. George Eberts was at a dark sky location outside of Athens, OH, with his Monday night Physical Science 140 class and saw the whole display from start to finish.

 "I had my Monday nite class out at Tony Mele's property on Kincaid Road," George reported. "The aurora was beautiful!! Lots of red hazy areas with vertical white streaks, and greenish-white along the bottom near the horizon. It extended at least sixty degrees in azimuth and reached over halfway to the zenith!"

Photo credit -Jasper Mitchin, Octoer 24, 2011 from Worthington, OH

Our neighbors to the north had a great view of the aurora. This photo was taken by Shawn Malone, from the shores of Lake Superior in Michigan.

This picture and article were posted on spaceweather.com on October 27.

"This shows the auroras on Oct. 25th at 0140 GMT," says Paul McCrone of the Fleet Numberical Meteorology and OCeanography Center in Monterey, California. He created the image using visual and infrared data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program's F18 polar orbiter. DMSP satellites carry low light cameras for nighttime monitoring of moonlit clouds, city lights and auroras. Some of the auroras recorded by the F18 on Oct.24th were as bright as the city lights underneath.