#Southern Lights
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Aurora Australis (Southern Lights) - Stirling Dam, Western Australia
#Aurora#Aurora Australis#Southern Lights#stars#space#night#sky#trails#tracks#landscape astrophotography#astrophotography#astrology#Western Australia#reflections#Australia#nikon#d5500
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the sky continues to keep its secrets from Me Specifically
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Today's auroral shenanigans
Relatively speaking, yesterday night (May 11/12) was a bit of "not much" for aurora-watchers, compared to the night of the 10th/11th. (Which, to be fair, was a most unusual event, and it wouldn't be surprising if it wasn't equaled for a long, long time.)
Nonetheless, the Sun continues to be in an interesting mood at the moment... specifically the big sunspot region AR3664, which is the one responsible for the auroral extravaganza of May 10th. You can just see it in this next image, getting ready to rotate away from us around the Sun's rightward limb.
(For those interested in scale: that complex of sunspots is about fifteen times the diameter of the Earth. You could drop the whole planet into the middle of the biggest one and lose it. A timelapse video of its growth is over here at YouTube, if you're interested.)
As AR3664 continues to spit out CMEs and flares, the NOAA has issued a geomagnetic storm watch for today, tonight and tomorrow—with the suggestion that conditions like those of the night of the 10th may in the relatively short term be about to repeat themselves.
This is a "watch" rather than a "warning," reflecting some uncertainty over exactly how the various incoming coronal mass injections are likely to behave on reaching Earth orbit. (Also, the CMEs aren't being aimed straight at us, but off to one side as the sunspot region rotates further and further toward the sun's edge: so this adds somewhat to the unpredictability of it all.)
The animation below comes from the SOHO spacecraft's LASCO C3 coronagraph instrument. It starts on May 10th and runs through until early on the morning of May 12th. You can see the newest incoming CMEs right at the end of it.
(BTW, I think the two bright objects to right and left of the Sun are probably comets passing through, as LASCO images normally mask out any planets that would be in view.)
Anyway, as for what this means for auroral activity tonight? It's tough to tell as yet. The planetary K index (which expresses the relative strength of geomagnetic storms) has dropped back down into near-baseline levels at the moment.
But when those new CMEs and the solar wind associated with them hits the atmosphere, things may change suddenly.
We'll soon see...
And an afterthought: AR3664 will soon be off around the Sun's edge, and invisible to us. It'll be interesting to see what happens to it after that.
The Sun takes 27 days to rotate, as a whole: the poles take longer, the equatorial regions a shorter time. In a couple of weeks or less, what will greet us, rotating around toward Earth's POV on that left-hand side? Will AR3664 have dissolved and vanished away, as sunspot groups so often do... or grown even bigger?
ETA 1, 12 May 2024, 1820 UT: Like a kitty coughing up hairball after cosmic hairball, AR has popped yet another X-class flare.
ETA 2, May 13 2024, 0100 IDT / 0000 UT: New G3 storm warning dropped.
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Behold, the southern lights! Aurora Australis! Glowy sky colors!!
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Aurora Australis, the southern lights, captured on 35mm film from the Space Shuttle Discovery on August 6, 2005. (via)
#aurora#aurora australis#southern lights#space#astronomy#science#35mm#film#nasa#astrophotography#aurora borealis#august 6
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the fact we got northern and southern lights at the same time is insane. Anyway here’s some Aurora Australis pics I took last night
#Northern Lights#aurora borealis#aurora australis#southern lights#Solar flare#my pics#raw pics#not edited#not Star wars#pretty#nature
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Sometimes I read a Zutara fic classic and I want to scream “WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME ABOUT THIS, THIS IS SO UNDERRATED” even though it’s on like a million rec lists and everyone has already read it??? Like nobody told me Once Around The Sun or Southern Lights are THIS good, even though EVERYONE said they’re good, does that make sense. I didn’t know they’d give me book hangovers and possibly change my brain chemistry
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Hey, here's some aurora australis!
We were so amazed to see anything at all, the city is bright and we're not terribly south. How wonderful
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An astronaut took this photograph of the Aurora Australis in August 2017. At the time, the International Space Station was moving over the southern Indian Ocean towards the Great Australian Bight and Melbourne, Australia.
#aurora#auroras#aurora australis#southern lights#stars#solar wind#solar winds#earth#space#orbit#magnetosphere#atmosphere#atmospheric phenomena#nasa#science#international space station#indian ocean#great australia bight#melbourne#australia#2017#2010s
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we complexly lucked put by going to Tasmania when a solar storm just happend to be on so i got to see the Aurora australia! we're going to have another look at 2am so ill have some more pics then
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Southern Lights and Shuttle Glow - May 6th, 1996.
"A background of distant stars, sinuous and spiky bands of Southern Lights (Aurora Australis), and the faint glow of charged plasma (ionised atomic gas) surrounding the Space Shuttle Discovery's engines give this photo from the STS-39 mission an eerie, otherworldly look. This image reflects Discovery's April 1991 mission well - its payload bay (PLB) was filled with instruments designed to study celestial objects, aurora and atmospheric phenomena, and the low Earth orbit environment around the PLB itself. The aurora seen here are at a height of about 50-80 miles and caused by charged particles in the solar wind, channeled through the van Allen Radiation Belts, which excite atoms of oxygen in the upper atmosphere."
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Got to see aurora australis last night!
I was at a youth bonfire social when we all saw faint reds and greens across the sky. These photos were taken with an Iphone 11, with the exposure set to 10 seconds in Silvan, VIC, Australia!
Rare natural weather phenomenons witnessed this year: 2
#aurora#aurora australis#southern lights#it was so beautiful#once in a lifetime experience#i was almost crying it was that amazing#this definitely beats seeing the fire tornado
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Auroras!!
#aurora australis#southern lights#I like never post stuff#but I’m excited to actually see shit for once!
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For those of you interested in aurora-watching: There've been a couple of CMEs in the last day or so, and the wavefront of one of them is in the process of arriving in Earth orbit this evening. The larger one will be arriving sometime tomorrow.
There's no telling for sure whether significant auroral activity might be happening where you are... but if you want to be able to make an educated guess, the link above is for you. The maps there will give you 30-minute warning of whether anything's incoming that's likely to be visible.
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Aurora Australis
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trying something new with my lineart, lmk if you like it or if it even looks different lmao
theyre up on a raffle on TH here^^
#my art#digital art#art#dragon#fluffy dragon#dragons#aroura#southern lights#space themed#raffle#free to enter#very proud of this lmao
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