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Space Weather Discussion


ApacheTrout
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Space Weather geek here: that huge burst of aurora was due to an auroral "substorm" that often occurs, we will likely see more through the night. You can track here at the GOES magnetometer site the strength of the parallel component of the Earth's magnetic field. I will explain why that's important below this...

 

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/goes-magnetometer

 

Basically, what happens is the Earth's magnetosphere (more specifically it's magnetotail) gets stretched and then subsequently rubber bands back and releases the built up energy. When it rubber bands back, that produces the bursts of Aurora. They usually occur every 2-3 hours. On that website, you can time the substorms by looking at the large down spikes, that indicates the aurora is "charging up". Then when it spikes back up, that means it releases the energy in a beautiful aurora display. I would recommend changing the tab to 6 hours to get a close up view of what the magnetometer is measuring. All of this to say... You might have to wait another 2 hours or so for the bright views to come back! They come in waves and that's just the nature of these things. But it's cool, you can actually predict Aurora substorms and bright views.

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  On 10/11/2024 at 12:54 AM, Newman said:

Space Weather geek here: that huge burst of aurora was due to an auroral "substorm" that often occurs, we will likely see more through the night. You can track here at the GOES magnetometer site the strength of the parallel component of the Earth's magnetic field. I will explain why that's important below this...

 

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/goes-magnetometer

 

Basically, what happens is the Earth's magnetosphere (more specifically it's magnetotail) gets stretched and then subsequently rubber bands back and releases the built up energy. When it rubber bands back, that produces the bursts of Aurora. They usually occur every 2-3 hours. On that website, you can time the substorms by looking at the large down spikes, that indicates the aurora is "charging up". Then when it spikes back up, that means it releases the energy in a beautiful aurora display. I would recommend changing the tab to 6 hours to get a close up view of what the magnetometer is measuring. All of this to say... You might have to wait another 2 hours or so for the bright views to come back! They come in waves and that's just the nature of these things. But it's cool, you can actually predict Aurora substorms and bright views.

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Interesting - thanks for sharing. The timing lines right up with things going nuts right at about 23:15 UTC. 

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  On 10/11/2024 at 1:21 AM, kdxken said:

Unreal huh? Usually you see pictures some one tricked up from Iceland and you know you don't have a chance .

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Yeah.  My aunt goes there now and then in the winter just to view them.  I get so jealous (can’t really travel there in the winter due to work) 

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