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#SolarStorm or Go outside and look up
If it is dark, and you live somewhere with dark skies….and you live somewhere North of the Mason-Dixie line, go outside right now AND LOOK UP.
There is a giant coronal mass ejection headed straight at us and NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center is predicting aurora as far south as maybe Alabama. I’m seeing reports of aurorae even from the Bahamas!
For those of you in Europe — If you’re in Europe, you are far enough North to see this storm.
Ok — outside? Here is a quick rundown of what might be happening.
As particles from the Sun hit the Earth’s atmosphere they travel along our planet’s magnetic field lines and as they travel they can interact with particles in our atmosphere, causing them to light up. The high up shades of Red come from the thin Oxygen, Green is emitted lower down — also by oxygen, but from places where there is more of it — and even lower down we can get Blue from Nitrogen.
All that color is coming from between 100–300 km above the Earth.
Why is this happening, you ask?
On Wednesday, May 8, ThirdRockAstronomy alerted me to Sunspot Complex 3364. Measuring 15 Earth-widths across, this darker-looking spot shows us where the Sun’s magnetic field lines are poking out through its surface, potentially waiting to fling material our way.
And it looks a lot like the Sunspots that caused the 1859 Carrington Event, which caused havoc on the Earth’s telegram lines and early power grid.
We speculated about what might happen if a Carrington like event occurred again over in Astronomy Cast episode 703 and we’re about to see if those speculations come true.
The Sun has emitted CMEs straight our way and the biggest magnetic storm since 2003 is predicted… and who knows if bigger things are to come.
Here’s what we’re watching: SpaceX just launched a new batch of starlinks. When the Earth’s atmosphere expands from the energy of the CME hitting it… those Starlinks may be DOOOMED.
There could be other satellites deorbited, zotted, or otherwise effected… And I’m wondering what they’ll have the astronauts do… they’re probably fine.
But there could be radio blackouts, power grid issues, and more.
And apparently, we’re seeing Starlink outages!
The next 24–48 hours… are going to be good for science, and potentially bad for a whole lot of other things.
For now though — LOOK UP!
