Green sky at night

May 10, 2024 6:51 AM

On Thursday, May 9, 2024, the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center issued a Severe (G4) Geomagnetic Storm Watch -- its first since January 2005. Coinciding with a new moon, aurorae should be visible (weather permitting) much further than typical. The Northern/Western-specific current predictions from NOAO show the view line extending below 40 degrees Northern latitude.

On the flip side, strong solar storms (notably the Carrington Event of 1859) can cause significant disruptions here on Earth. A previous, weaker storm caused 40 SpaceX satellites to deorbit, so, while Canadians will have an excellent show this weekend, they should also wear a hard hat.

posted by miguelcervantes (55 comments total)

You know, I literally live about an hour away from an official Dark Sky Reserve here in Southeastern Ontario and it's stuff like this that makes me wish, if only momentarily, that I owned a car.

I hate the term "bucket list," but witnessing the Aurora Borealis (or even the Aurora Australis) is on it.
posted by Kitteh at 7:05 AM on May 10 [5 favorites]

Those rings around the pole on the NOAA maps remind me of another recent post... we might need more than a hard hat.
posted by rory at 7:11 AM on May 10

Geomagnetic Storm ate my homework.
posted by nickggully at 7:21 AM on May 10 [3 favorites]

Aurora Borealis? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country?
posted by uncleozzy at 7:24 AM on May 10 [32 favorites]

Aurora Borealis? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country?

In this economy?
posted by Foosnark at 7:48 AM on May 10 [13 favorites]

Naturally, it's supposed to be overcast here until Sunday.
posted by dirigibleman at 7:52 AM on May 10 [6 favorites]

Aurora Borealis? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country?
. . .
Naturally, it's supposed to be overcast here until Sunday.

Can I see it?
No.
posted by The Bellman at 8:21 AM on May 10 [17 favorites]

If this had more lead time, like the eclipse, I would totally chase it to Northern Minnesota. Not gonna hop on a flight today for the best chance tho'!

Do we have any capability of medium range sunstorm-activity forecast?
posted by lalochezia at 8:34 AM on May 10

I literally live about an hour away from an official Dark Sky Reserve here in Southeastern Ontario and it's stuff like this that makes me wish, if only momentarily, that I owned a car.

I live about five hours from another Dark Sky site, Cherry Springs State Park in north-central Pennsylvania, and went there with some friends in a rental. No Aurora Borealis, unfortunately, but the night sky there was an incredibly beautiful sight. You really should go to the one near you if you ever get a chance.
posted by star gentle uterus at 8:41 AM on May 10 [4 favorites]

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas. A gigantic nuclear furnace.

Actually, no.

The sun's a miasma of incandescent plasma!
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 8:43 AM on May 10 [18 favorites]

You know, I literally live about an hour away from an official Dark Sky Reserve here in Southeastern Ontario and it's stuff like this that makes me wish, if only momentarily, that I owned a car.

I hate the term "bucket list," but witnessing the Aurora Borealis (or even the Aurora Australis) is on it.

As far as I can tell from the maps, southeastern Ontario is juuuust out of the viewing zone. We are only permitted 1 cosmic spectacle per year I guess.
posted by saturday_morning at 8:57 AM on May 10 [1 favorite]

If this had more lead time, like the eclipse, I would totally chase it to Northern Minnesota.

Sadly, Geomagnetic storms are known divas and rarely announce their presence, they simply arrive!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:06 AM on May 10 [2 favorites]

I gather what makes this one a particular concern is that it's 5 different coronal mass ejections at once interacting in unpredictable ways as they approach Earth. We'll see how it goes. High altitudes are more at risk for electromagnetic disruption, right?
posted by mediareport at 9:09 AM on May 10

it's stuff like this that makes me wish, if only momentarily, that I owned a car.

There will probably be a gazillion cars heading out, might be worth begging a ride on the social media of your choice.
posted by Mitheral at 9:24 AM on May 10

Looks at the local five day forecast: Cloudy, Showers, Rain, Rain, Showers. Yep, it checks out!

Not that we expect anything different in North America's largest temperate rainforest but just once I'd like to get a break in the clouds to line up with one of these events. Alas.. right latitude, wrong climate..
posted by Nerd of the North at 10:25 AM on May 10 [1 favorite]

Down here in Seattle, it's going to be the hottest day of the year, and the skies are clear.

Went to Ketchikan once for a job. No, twice I think. Did inventory for what was the C Mart and all the other businesses that guy owned in the mall-ish space next door. Such a pretty spot.

Still can remember going out late at night, sitting on the rocks by the water. Seeing all the stars, hearing the ocean...

Will certainly go out looking tonight. Have seen them twice before, and they are pretty fucking cool
posted by Windopaene at 10:45 AM on May 10 [1 favorite]

If this had more lead time, like the eclipse, I would totally chase it to Northern Minnesota. Not gonna hop on a flight today for the best chance tho'!

Just hop on a night flight for somewhere that takes a great circle route; you’ll have the advantage of being over any clouds!
posted by TedW at 11:23 AM on May 10

>Do we have any capability of medium range sunstorm-activity forecast?

When a couple of large and complex sunspot clusters started developing early in the week we had pretty high confidence there would be a lot of activity, but couldn't predict anything for certain (btw, if you still have your eclipse glasses you can see these sunspot regions with the naked eye).

For this geomagnetic storm we had about 2 days lead time when we saw a couple of solar flares Wednesday morning that produced significant coronal mass ejections directed toward Earth (solar flares don't alway produce CMEs and they're often not directed toward Earth). The stronger one peaked early Wednesday morning (late Tuesday night for the Americas) and the other was about 7 hours later. The later CME was faster though, so it was expected to catch up to the earlier one and both were predicted to arrive around the same time late Friday. There have been a few more Earth-directed CMEs after those, so the storm should last off-and-on through the weekend.

It isn't possible to say exactly how strong the resulting geomagnetic storm will be when we see a CME heading this way, but we had a pretty good idea this one would be significant — early predictions on Wednesday from the Space Weather Prediction Center were for a moderate storm and that was before the ensuing CMEs happened.
posted by theory at 12:21 PM on May 10 [2 favorites]

I'll definitely be looking tonight. In the 90s I saw one during a night drive from Bellingham to Seattle. Spotted it out the back window of the car, and we stopped at a dark off-ramp and marveled at the faint green waves.
posted by surlyben at 1:54 PM on May 10

Actually, not a bad chance at the Dark Sky Viewing area near me!
posted by Kitteh at 2:39 PM on May 10 [1 favorite]

Ironically, for once being so far north is a bit of a hindrance. Sunset here is 21.04, but sunrise is a shockingly early 4.25 and in between is just a few hours of twilight - no proper night sky. Tried looking an hour ago and no dice. I did see them in January from far northern Sweden (and holy crap they were amazing), hope my NA friends get a similar experience, it really is something else.
posted by photo guy at 2:59 PM on May 10 [1 favorite]

I'll be going by a park here in Seattle area. See if I can get a few photos. Tomorrow I may try to take roomies up to a semi local public astronomy meetup
posted by AngelWuff at 3:26 PM on May 10

Seeing reports from friends in europe of pink/purple skies.

Meanwhile the Guardian weighs in

The solar storm is classified as G4, the equivalent of a category four hurricane

posted by joeyh at 3:41 PM on May 10

oh it's on mofos! Europe is pink!

https://www.foto-webcam.eu/
posted by gwint at 4:25 PM on May 10 [4 favorites]

From my space weather app:

"With an observed Dst at -348 this is now one of the all-time strongest geomagnetic storms of the modern era, only rivaled by the Halloween Solar Storms of 2003 and the 1989 storm that knocked out power grids in Quebec.

You are witnessing space weather history today... and it isn't over yet. Sky watchers in the USA, this is your ultimate chance to see aurora from states like California and Texas. Do not miss out on this opportunity!"

posted by theory at 5:27 PM on May 10 [2 favorites]

For anybody located further south — you don't need to be under that red donut on the maps to see the aurora - you can be as far as 500 miles / 800km to the south and still see them near the northern horizon.
posted by theory at 6:01 PM on May 10 [1 favorite]

The geomagnetic storm just got upgraded to a G5. This is the strongest one we've had in 20 or more years.

I just happened to have tuned up my bike over the last couple of days. And now my camera batteries are charged, I actually found my tripod, my cable shutter release and my filters, I have some clean memory cards - and I've been waiting for this one for days (well, years, really) and taking it easy to pace myself with my long covid fatigue to try to get out there for at least a few shots.

This is a shot I took back in 2017, and note that this was classed as a G2 to G3, about 60-65 gigawatts. And this time I have some ideas about nice locations with foreground features for good astrolandscape shots, because that shot was a total accident and serendipity.

I've been seeing peaks on the forecast pages of 330 GIGAWATTS which is totally insane and basically off the normal scale that usually peaks at 200 gw.
posted by loquacious at 6:02 PM on May 10 [4 favorites]

Holy crap, 360 GW now.
posted by loquacious at 6:11 PM on May 10 [3 favorites]

Those eclipse glasses have been sitting in a ziploc bag next to my desk for a few weeks, and it only now occurred to me to take a look at some non-eclipse sun. It's getting close to sunset in Oregon and there's a nice naked eye*-visible sunspot near the bottom of the sun.

* OK-I put on my old-man driving glasses and layered the eclipse glasses on top of those.
posted by polecat at 6:35 PM on May 10 [3 favorites]

I grabbed some images earlier today with the seestar using the solar filter.


Some videos and timelapses too but they seemed to just sit there
posted by Lord_Pall at 6:42 PM on May 10

Those eclipse glasses have been sitting in a ziploc bag next to my desk for a few weeks, and it only now occurred to me to take a look at some non-eclipse sun.

If you're careful you can do this with very small binoculars or monoculars, too, but they need to go between the sun and the binoculars and be able to cover the first lens, and not between your eyes and the binoculars.

If you try to put them between the eyepiece of binoculars or monoculars there's a really good chance you're going to burn a hole right through the eclipse glasses and your eyeballs.

If you want something safer, the pinhole camera in tinfoil trick can also show sunspots. Move the pinhole as far away from your viewing paper or surface to magnify it.
posted by loquacious at 7:18 PM on May 10

Hey, the clouds went away! It's more like pink sky at night (with a little green). The last time I saw aurora was from the roof of Van Allen Hall at the University of Iowa about 20 years ago.
posted by dirigibleman at 7:27 PM on May 10

My cousin in WV is sending some killer pics.
posted by credulous at 7:41 PM on May 10

Definitely seeing it here in Pittsburgh, though it's much easier through a phone camera and a long exposure. Amazing.
posted by miratime at 7:57 PM on May 10

Even seeing some pics in panhandle Florida, though mainly Night Mode iPhone pics. I saw someone on Sanibel Island claim they saw them too.
posted by credulous at 8:17 PM on May 10 [1 favorite]

Wow, it was very cool here in Vermont! It seems like the peak has passed now. Green and red colors and interesting flashing/flickering effects. I've seen northern lights before, but never with colors. That was maybe better than the eclipse. This is turning out to be a good year for sky phenomena in Vermont.
posted by Redstart at 8:21 PM on May 10

So, here's some live Magnetometer readings and a whole lot of live and aggregated data.

https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/auroral-activity/magnetometers.html#DST_index

I'm trying to find live data on how close (or far) we are from a Carrington Event sized storm. Wikipedia quotes that it's was actually measured with magnetometers:

On 1 and 2 September 1859, one of the largest geomagnetic storms (as recorded by ground-based magnetometers) occurred.[6] Estimates of the storm strength (Dst) range from −0.80 to −1.75 μT.[7]

I can't help but note that the SpaceWeatherLive page I linked is showing observed Dst way higher than estimates, and it's likely that the main bulk of these mass ejections aren't even here yet.

This one is called a "cannbal" flare, where multiple large flares happen one after another, and what can happen is that the first CME clears the way and the ones that follow can go faster and catch up and overlap with both more mass and velocity.

I wouldn't be surprised to see power outages and other issues with this one. *shrug* power and internet is still on here.
posted by loquacious at 8:22 PM on May 10 [2 favorites]

It's dimmed considerably since I was out last time. I could barely see it even in my rural area. I got some decent night mode pics, though.
posted by dirigibleman at 8:22 PM on May 10

Seemed like here in SE Michigan we took a top of the sky hit from the storm. Absolutely incredible!
posted by JoeXIII007 at 8:47 PM on May 10

The CCOR coronagraph, a new part of the space weather suite of instruments on the GOES-U satellite, will be headed to orbit on June 25th. Just missed it!
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 9:15 PM on May 10

If you're thinking of going to see the show from the Vista House in the Columbia River Gorge...great idea, as evidenced by the 10,000 other people who thought the same! Seriously: go somewhere else. We turned a short ways toward Larch Mountain and found a spot with much less car headlights. Some faint colors were visible to the naked eye, and they turned out quite gaudy in a long exposure.
posted by polecat at 12:15 AM on May 11 [2 favorites]

Not that we expect anything different in North America's largest temperate rainforest but just once I'd like to get a break in the clouds to line up with one of these events. Alas.. right latitude, wrong climate..

I was a bit shocked to get my wish - not too long before sunset the skies unexpectedly cleared. As dark came on, things started clouding back up a bit but we wound up with a period of decent viewing through a light haze - only the highest magnitude stars were visible through the haze but we got plenty of color from the aurora. What a nice surprise!

Wound up watching from my deck with some of the neighbors and chatting in the dark to neighbors on another deck nearby. My old phone was crap at capturing the lights and I fiddled around with my tripod and dSLR for only a short while before giving up and just enjoying the show but my neighbors were getting perfectly respectable snaps just from handheld shots with their phones. Of course the camera exaggerates the intensity, but despite the light haze we still were getting quite a nice range of colors visible to the naked eye and distinct sheets and streaks of light moving through the night sky.

Best display of aurora I've personally managed to catch in nearly 20 years of living here, though we miss most of our chances because of the aforementioned weather issues.
posted by Nerd of the North at 12:45 AM on May 11

Our local Mastodon instance is going off tonight with pictures of the aurora. Even here in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, the capital of Aotearoa, with all the light pollution of a largish city, the average mobile phone can reveal some amazing skies. The further south you go of course, the better, but there are some amazing photos being posted.
posted by vac2003 at 1:08 AM on May 11

I've always wanted to see the northern lights, but never dreamed for a second that I'd ever be able to watch them from my hometown in northern England. We're near the edges of several large conurbations, it's normally cloudy, and you can't even see the Milky Way when it is clear, so it's not a great location for stargazing. Nevertheless I popped outside last night at 11pm on the off chance, and even by my house which is in a small town centre between two well lit roads I could see traces of a faint glow in the sky. A short walk to the top of the hill revealed a vast arc of lights streaming from directly above out across the whole sky, with green and pink tints clearly visible to the naked eye. Phone pictures don't really do it justice in a way, yes you can see more of the colour, but they totally fail to convey the sheer scale of it. Absolutely awesome.
posted by tomsk at 4:10 AM on May 11 [4 favorites]

Here in Seattle, the aurora was visible from our yard around 11 PM, despite all the light pollution from being in the city.

NOAA says ‘extreme’ Solar storm will persist through the weekend (Eric Berger, Ars Technica).
posted by mbrubeck at 7:40 AM on May 11

I have family who saw them last night in North and South Carolina. Amazing! I'm probably not up to driving to a Dark Sky site, but considering walking over into the state park tonight to see if it's dark enough for a good view from the granite outcrops.
posted by hydropsyche at 7:56 AM on May 11 [1 favorite]

This was a bucket list item for me that I always thought I'd have to go to Alaska or Iceland to check off. But I'm quite satisfied with the Seattle area light show! For logistics reasons I ended up having to drive home quite late and I actually pulled off I-5 around 1:30am to watch for a few minutes because I could see the lights from the highway.
posted by potrzebie at 8:11 AM on May 11

Late evening pink sky with vertical beaming effects near Death Valley. Unexpected spectacle.
posted by hortense at 9:14 AM on May 11 [1 favorite]

> Even seeing some pics in panhandle Florida, though mainly Night Mode iPhone pics. I saw someone on Sanibel Island claim they saw them too.

It's currently turtle nesting season way down here, so the lights out requirements likely help with visible (I assume). Being in a stilt-home or McMansion also likely helps you see over the ground surroundings.
posted by Fiberoptic Zebroid and The Hypnagogic Jerks at 9:18 AM on May 11

And we didn't see any borealis at all, but we didn't expect too either. We're about 20 miles east of Sanibel in a single-story home in a light-noise steeped inland neighborhood.
posted by Fiberoptic Zebroid and The Hypnagogic Jerks at 9:28 AM on May 11

Really big show up here on the Olympic Peninsula. But I got tired by the time it was dark enough and the moon went down, so I didn't really leave the house and got distracted mostly just watching it with the housemates and trying to get some shots from the driveway.

Lots of visible colors and shifting all over the whole visible spectrum, and I found this one to be really difficult to photograph because of how bright and dynamic it was.

I did get to answer some science questions for the landmates which was fun.
posted by loquacious at 9:28 AM on May 11 [2 favorites]

August 2015. Northern Wisconsin. Very special, dark place, on a body of water called Guile Flowage. A spot I knew well. Here's a panorma my partner took. It's 360 degree spherical. Look up, too!

Panorama: https://www.360cities.net/image/northern-lights-wisconsin
posted by Goofyy at 5:03 PM on May 11 [3 favorites]

Saw a little bit this evening, at the very north edge of Illinois (like, seriously, we were maybe 100 yards from Wisconsin). Visible but faint to the eye, but I got some good long-exposure iPhone pics. The colors showed up clearly in the long exposures, but were only barely perceptible live.
posted by notoriety public at 11:20 PM on May 11

Solar Storm Knocks Out Farmers' Tractor GPS Systems During Peak Planting Season

I learned today that our food supply depends on the availability of high-precision GPS. You didn't want this thread to be all optimism, did you?
posted by credulous at 7:06 AM on May 12

I had to get up at 4:30 AM for a cycling race the morning it hovered over Austin. As such, I had to miss seeing something that's been on my own bucket list since I was a teenager. Guess I'll still have to find my way up north one of these years (and pray that my travel plans coincide with an actual aurora event).
posted by mykescipark at 7:41 AM on May 12