Thursday, December 14, 2006

Aurora TONIGHT in North America

Here we go again with celestial events...!

This just in from Mark Haun, owner of Aurora-Announce (and inventor of Aurora Alarm):

"Conditions over the past hour have become favorable for aurora. The current activity is due to a large solar flare which occurred Tuesday evening. The leading edge of the CME (coronal mass ejection) arrived at Earth this morning ~6 a.m. PST. Since then, the magnetic fields embedded in the disturbance were pointing the wrong way, until about 4 p.m. PST. Now the field is oriented southward, antiparallel to the Earth's magnetic field---the conditions necessary to fire up the aurora. If these conditions persist for a few more hours, we could have a very nice show in the US and Canada.

A major winter storm has all of Washington under cloud cover, so you should not expect an alarm on aurora-northwest, unless the aurora manages to trip the detector through the overcast. So, if you can get to a dark, clear site, I suggest you leave now. Good luck!"

(From aurora-announce mailing list)

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