Beautiful. I always find it comforting to see that all the high-energy particles that would otherwise fry our brains are shipped off to the poles.
Bob
Yup. We would get fried but good if there was no magnetic field protecting us. There was enough energy up there last night to power the US for a week. And this was just a baby aurora. Just a magnetic field reversal in the solar wind and not even from a big CME. This solar cycle has been somewhat of a bust so far. Barley any M class flares, let alone any big X class flares.
The last solar cycle was much more exciting. My friend Suzanne and I must have shot photos of 50 different events between 1999 and 2002. We didn't get a lot of sleep, but man we saw some sights. We saw a couple CME impacts from big X class flares that pushed the auroral oval that circles the Earth completely down over us here at 47.75 degrees latitude. The sky was dark to the north and we were shooting Aurora picts facing south! We live for that giant X flare that sends auroras to the equator and blows the power grids.
If you'd like to see a few of the photos I have taken of some much bigger auroras, then go here:
http://skychasers.net/paul.htm
And a few of Suzanne's aurora photos are here:
http://skychasers.net/sue.htm
She is one hell of a good photographer. Much better than I am. I can only take pictures at night. She is good all the time. And she can paint, and write, and do all sorts of things I suck at. lol You can see some of the things does here:
http://skylight.skychasers.net/
enjoy