Scandinavians woke up to an unusal sight the other day: "The sky turned green for about ten minutes," reported photographer Geir Øye of Ørsta, Norway to SpaceWeather.com (click to enlarge).
LINKS
|
The sky is green! Time to pack up for dooms day?
Posted: Mar 07, 2006 10:28 pm EST
(Pythom.com) "Halla - himlen ar gron!" Scandinavians woke up to an unusal sight yesterday: "The sky turned green for about ten minutes," reported photographer Geir Øye of Ørsta, Norway to SpaceWeather.com. "The half-Moon illuminated the snowy mountainside through a patchy layer of thin clouds."
The sun is quiet right now which is a good thing for explorers' sat phones and a bad thing for Aurora watchers. But on March 6th, the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) tipped south, opening a crack in Earth's magnetosphere. Solar wind flowed in and bright auroras appeared over Scandinavia--no sunspots required, reports SpaceWeather.
The magnetic field "tipped" south? What's up with that? SpaceWeather explains the deal of our drafty magnetic shield:
"According to new observations from NASA's IMAGE spacecraft and the joint NASA/European Space Agency Cluster satellites, immense cracks sometimes develop in Earth's magnetosphere and remain open for hours. This allows the solar wind to gush through and power stormy space weather."
*Halla - himlen ar gron (Swedish) = Hello - the sky is green
Fortunately, these cracks don't expose Earth's surface to the solar wind. Our atmosphere protects us, even when our magnetic field doesn't. The effects of solar storms are felt mainly in the high upper atmosphere and the region of space around Earth where satellites orbit.
|
