Big, Beautiful Auroras with More to Come
A very faint auroral glow appears within 5° of the northern horizon around 12:30 this morning from Duluth, Minn. Bob King If you saw Friday night's aurora I think you'll agree it was worth the wait. Like you, I checked at 9, 10 and 11 o'clock and saw nothing. But shortly before midnight, the DSCOVR spacecraft , located about a million miles sunward of Earth, detected a sudden and significant change in the direction of the particle stream that blows from the sun called the solar wind. This is a screen grab of solar wind activity recorded by the DSCVR satellite. It receives early warning of potential storm events. The satellite recorded an abrupt change in the solar wind's magnetic direction around 11:45 CDT. An hour and a half later, the aurora appeared across the northern states with sightings at least as far south as southern Minnesota. NOAA with additions by the author Normally, it takes about an hour and a half for that material to cross that million miles and arri...