Solar Storm Headed for Earth Tonight; May Spawn Auroras
for National Geographic News
Published August 3, 2010
Night owls take note: A spectacular sky show of rippling auroras may be on tap for late Tuesday through early Wednesday, according to astrophysicists, and the phenomenon may be more widely visible than normal.
On Sunday cameras aboard NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured an eruption on the sun's surface that hurled tons of plasma—charged gas—directly toward our planet in an event called a coronal mass ejection. (See sun pictures taken by the solar observatory.)
Because it takes several days for such ionized clouds to reach Earth's atmosphere, the burst of charged particles should hit us tonight—and there's a chance it'll produce especially colorful auroras.
Auroras happen when energized particles from the sun interact with Earth's magnetic field. The particles flow down the field lines that run toward Earth's Poles, banging into atoms of atmospheric nitrogen and oxygen along the way.
The charged solar particles give Earth's atmospheric atoms an energy boost, which then gets released as light, producing the shimmering curtains of greens, reds, and other colors.
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