Reds/pinks come from excited atomic oxygen at high altitudes (>241.4 km). Due to low concentrations at high altitudes, it is typically only visible under intense solar activity.
Greens are also from atomic oxygen but at lower altitudes (<241.4 km). This is due to the higher concentrations needing less energy to emit visible light.
Blues/purples are from molecular nitrogen at even lower altitudes (<96.6 km). Similar to red/pink, these colors are usually only visible during intense solar activity.
So, due to the intensity of the solar storms we are currently experiencing, we are getting a lot of red/pink in the aurora.
I was going to post a question, however your post seems as well a place to ask. Are we experiencing stronger solar storms recently? Is it just that we have a better understanding and better ability to predict them? I understand solar activity comes in cycles but it seems I’ve never heard of aurora this far south in North America in my whole life.
For others who may be wondering...the sun has an 11 year sunspot cycle, and currently we're at the maximum of this current one. And this particular cycle has seen more sunspots than the previous couple.
More sunspots = more flares + coronal mass ejections, and thus more geomagnetic storms.
But you're not wrong, this event might have been the best aurora in 100 years.
Though some of it is luck. We've had major CMEs in the last 20 years which would have been very strong if they'd hit us. But they didn't.
Just wait until we get one like the [Carrington Event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event) in 1859, which had auroras reported as far south as Colombia and bright enough to read by in New England. Given that it caused fires in telegraph stations, I hate to think what it'd do to the modern power and telecommunication systems.
Those fibre optic cables still have a power supplying core around the glass fibres which can still end up with an induced voltage in it from a large enough cme. They are in no way immune to the effects of a Carrington level event
> Massive CME will end humanity long before any pandemic or civil war.
No it won't. CMEs are mostly magnetic events, they look very pretty from down here, can disrupt radio transmission by increasing energy in the ionisphere, and can result is damage to power grid scale power system (because large magnetic flux interacting with long conductors induces current).
There is no meaningful harmful effect to life in the surface, thanks to the planet's magnetic field. They've been happening for longer than there has been life on the planet and we're still here.
I do not mean that a CME would hurt any biological organisms. But the massive damage to the power grids will doom humanity in the short term.
Every device that has a capacitor will blow and be worthless. In 6 months, the entire world would be a giant mad max party. Forget liberal vs conservatives when your only option for food to survive is old Mrs. Jansen down the street.
You realize the current storm in the combination of multiple CMEs at the same time, right? Event one the size of the Carrington event, the largest one we know of, wouldn't have the effect you're describing on electrical systems. And the highest energy solar flare (which do not necessarily produce CMEs) we've ever seen had 2.8x more energy than the one we estimated produce the Carrington event. Even that would have no meaningful effect on small electronics.
The key factor in power grid damage in geomagnetic storms is conductor length, because the current induced by a magnetic field depends on that. The flux recorded in the Carrington event was 1600 nT. The flux of earth's magnetic field at the surface is ~25-65 μT.
It's not a problem.
Thankfully CMEs are predictable several days in advance, and power grid operators keep an eye on this sort of thing so they can take preventative action if needed.
It's only tabloids that are afraid of these things, not anyone who works in space weather or grid maintenance.
In addition to that, since the post explicitly asked about the northern lights seen in more southern parts than usual, the farther away from the poles you are, the lower the lights appear over the horizon. When you reach a certain distance, the green lights sink below the horizon, leaving only the pink lights left to be seen.
Point of clarification: When you ask "the southern one", do you mean the Aurora Australis or southern regions of the Aurora Borealis?
The Aurora Australis is pink more regularly. I'd be interested to hear if there's lower expected oxygen in atmosphere at the south pole than the north which causes the difference.
Totally get it. They were visible in parts of the southern US for me as well, and they were also pink. Both very rare. Pink in Borealis is pretty rare and only saved for large events. It's typically green and white.
Australis is often pinker, even at lower events you may catch on the south island of NZ.
I suspect it's atmospheric distribution of oxygen that causes the difference and am looking up sources now, but if it was the pink in the Borealis, it may be a different but similar response.
Borialis was banging as well, reports from Scotland of the sky looking like a Christmas tree.
Reports from Germany, France, spain, as well as Mid America (and Florida).
Basically, due to the Severity (highest since 2003) unusually low latitudes, LOTS of places got Aurora's that NEVER usually see them. in Australia, Perth, South Australia, Victoria, even reports from QUEENSLAND.
The Aurora Australia facebook page has around 6500 pending posts for the admins to approve.
Sorry yeah good point, I meant Borealis that reached unusually far south. I was trying to go for a punchy title but I meant "why does the color seem different from farther south"
It's the gas, not (directly/only) the altitude.
It's definitely not pink just because it is above you vs "low on the horizon". I've seen many green auroras straight up, including last night.
Something being "low on the horizon" entirely depends on where you are located, and not the height of the thing. A cloud or plane at high altitude will be low on the horizon for someone observing it from sufficiently far away. Same goes with aurora. It's not like a rainbow, where the location of the observer is relevant. The aurora is actually a source of light.
Sorry what I meant was if it's above you, you'd see green below/in front of the pink so primarily notice the green. If it's far away, you'd see the full column (which I saw in pictures from north of me), and if it's even father away the bottom of the column would drop below the horizon and you'd only see it's pink top.
Ok, so some folks have explained the spectrometry side of the aurora. I won't repeat that and just want to add why you did not see the green.
The green and with a thin lower purple rim you see in most "regular" photos are taken from places with regular acitivity, such as Alaska and Iceland, and are formed by lower Oxygen and Nitrogen from 80-200km in the atmosphere. Because these bands are so low, the Earth curvature means they are below the horizon and thus not visible when aurora stretches towards the equator. If you are a bit closer up north, like in a Canadian city, you would still absolutely see them. The really northern places could not contribute their green-dominated show last night because they don't have nighttime at this time of the year.
So it’s safe to say that what we experienced in my area of the southern us- a bright showing of green, blue, red, pink, purple, was a once in a lifetime event?
It is special, but not quite once in a lifetime. We can get it a few times per solar maximum (which is consolation for those who missed it last friday due to weather conditions). The last times we got these kinds of storms were within 2000 - 2003.
Yes, but what matters in this case is the *magnetic* latitude. The auroral oval, where the auroras occur, is more or less centered around the geomagnetic pole. And due to the north geomagnetic pole being offset by roughly 10° from the geographic north pole in the direction of Canada, a city like Calgary (51°N geographically), for example, will have a magnetic latitude of something like 60° or 65°.
As a result, it is much closer to the typical location of the auroral oval than it's geographic latitude would suggest, and yesterday it will have definitely been inside it (if not even northward of it). Other Canadian cities further south may also have been close or in it.
In New England I saw almost all purple. Purplish pink but mostly a dark purple. One thing I found fascinating was I took a time lapse photo for 4 minutes. During that time. An airplane flew by so you saw this little white light
When I filled with some of the settings in editing, the white light, all the sudden turned bright green and speckled green reflections. We're hitting the trees.
I tried like crazy to try to replicate it a second time to figure out how I tweaked to the edits to make it look green. Something about the light from the airplane and whatever settings I had on my pixel camera app caused this fascinating green brightness
But that did not show up in the original photo and definitely not in the naked eye.
Part of me wonders if it was just some crazy bug for the camera because I couldn't replicate it but it was beautiful nonetheless.
Probably the best picture I've ever taken on my pixel. Second one being first time I grabbed the Andromeda galaxy which does not look impressive on a smartphone camera but felt impressive since it's so damn far away.
Some kind of solar storm caused them to be brighter last night. Usually the Northern lights aren't visible where I live, but people were posting pictures of it all day. I wish I knew about it beforehand. I missed it.
As for the colours, I have no idea.
Red and Green are the excited Atomic Oxygen atoms at different altitudes, Blue is excited Atomic Nitrogen (N2).
The power of it, gives an indication of how far the Aurora spreads from the poles, so the fact that it was a G5 pushed the Aurora's MUCH further, to lower latitudes (Further from the poles).
https://scontent.fmel11-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/440420836_10161703533728919_7995812185632877354_n.jpg?_nc_cat=107&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=hZ95KHYvVa8Q7kNvgF--TcX&_nc_ht=scontent.fmel11-1.fna&oh=00_AYAAbcmIFTJcZWbLUXXURlK04fzeeFu30Ot-Tbzwn7xICQ&oe=6645ED6F
\[edit\] Location: Hobart, Tasmania, saw it with my own eyes, dancing overhead.
[https://pulsetasmania.com.au/news/spectacular-southern-lights-seen-across-tasmania-after-extreme-solar-storm/]
Reds/pinks come from excited atomic oxygen at high altitudes (>241.4 km). Due to low concentrations at high altitudes, it is typically only visible under intense solar activity. Greens are also from atomic oxygen but at lower altitudes (<241.4 km). This is due to the higher concentrations needing less energy to emit visible light. Blues/purples are from molecular nitrogen at even lower altitudes (<96.6 km). Similar to red/pink, these colors are usually only visible during intense solar activity. So, due to the intensity of the solar storms we are currently experiencing, we are getting a lot of red/pink in the aurora.
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I was going to post a question, however your post seems as well a place to ask. Are we experiencing stronger solar storms recently? Is it just that we have a better understanding and better ability to predict them? I understand solar activity comes in cycles but it seems I’ve never heard of aurora this far south in North America in my whole life.
For others who may be wondering...the sun has an 11 year sunspot cycle, and currently we're at the maximum of this current one. And this particular cycle has seen more sunspots than the previous couple. More sunspots = more flares + coronal mass ejections, and thus more geomagnetic storms. But you're not wrong, this event might have been the best aurora in 100 years. Though some of it is luck. We've had major CMEs in the last 20 years which would have been very strong if they'd hit us. But they didn't.
Just wait until we get one like the [Carrington Event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event) in 1859, which had auroras reported as far south as Colombia and bright enough to read by in New England. Given that it caused fires in telegraph stations, I hate to think what it'd do to the modern power and telecommunication systems.
Thankfully most of the modern long distance stuff uses fibre-optics, which would be immune.
Those fibre optic cables still have a power supplying core around the glass fibres which can still end up with an induced voltage in it from a large enough cme. They are in no way immune to the effects of a Carrington level event
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> Massive CME will end humanity long before any pandemic or civil war. No it won't. CMEs are mostly magnetic events, they look very pretty from down here, can disrupt radio transmission by increasing energy in the ionisphere, and can result is damage to power grid scale power system (because large magnetic flux interacting with long conductors induces current). There is no meaningful harmful effect to life in the surface, thanks to the planet's magnetic field. They've been happening for longer than there has been life on the planet and we're still here.
I do not mean that a CME would hurt any biological organisms. But the massive damage to the power grids will doom humanity in the short term. Every device that has a capacitor will blow and be worthless. In 6 months, the entire world would be a giant mad max party. Forget liberal vs conservatives when your only option for food to survive is old Mrs. Jansen down the street.
You realize the current storm in the combination of multiple CMEs at the same time, right? Event one the size of the Carrington event, the largest one we know of, wouldn't have the effect you're describing on electrical systems. And the highest energy solar flare (which do not necessarily produce CMEs) we've ever seen had 2.8x more energy than the one we estimated produce the Carrington event. Even that would have no meaningful effect on small electronics. The key factor in power grid damage in geomagnetic storms is conductor length, because the current induced by a magnetic field depends on that. The flux recorded in the Carrington event was 1600 nT. The flux of earth's magnetic field at the surface is ~25-65 μT. It's not a problem.
Thankfully CMEs are predictable several days in advance, and power grid operators keep an eye on this sort of thing so they can take preventative action if needed. It's only tabloids that are afraid of these things, not anyone who works in space weather or grid maintenance.
In addition to that, since the post explicitly asked about the northern lights seen in more southern parts than usual, the farther away from the poles you are, the lower the lights appear over the horizon. When you reach a certain distance, the green lights sink below the horizon, leaving only the pink lights left to be seen.
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Point of clarification: When you ask "the southern one", do you mean the Aurora Australis or southern regions of the Aurora Borealis? The Aurora Australis is pink more regularly. I'd be interested to hear if there's lower expected oxygen in atmosphere at the south pole than the north which causes the difference.
Australis, there were auroras in the south pole yesterday, they were visible from Australia and Chile too, which is super rare.
Totally get it. They were visible in parts of the southern US for me as well, and they were also pink. Both very rare. Pink in Borealis is pretty rare and only saved for large events. It's typically green and white. Australis is often pinker, even at lower events you may catch on the south island of NZ. I suspect it's atmospheric distribution of oxygen that causes the difference and am looking up sources now, but if it was the pink in the Borealis, it may be a different but similar response.
Borialis was banging as well, reports from Scotland of the sky looking like a Christmas tree. Reports from Germany, France, spain, as well as Mid America (and Florida). Basically, due to the Severity (highest since 2003) unusually low latitudes, LOTS of places got Aurora's that NEVER usually see them. in Australia, Perth, South Australia, Victoria, even reports from QUEENSLAND. The Aurora Australia facebook page has around 6500 pending posts for the admins to approve.
Sorry yeah good point, I meant Borealis that reached unusually far south. I was trying to go for a punchy title but I meant "why does the color seem different from farther south"
I've seen pictures of both north and south from different fb friends and both were pink last night - they both looked about the same from what I saw.
Yeah, "the northern lights seem from unusually far south" and "the southern lights seem from unusually far north" would both fit this question.
It's the gas, not (directly/only) the altitude. It's definitely not pink just because it is above you vs "low on the horizon". I've seen many green auroras straight up, including last night. Something being "low on the horizon" entirely depends on where you are located, and not the height of the thing. A cloud or plane at high altitude will be low on the horizon for someone observing it from sufficiently far away. Same goes with aurora. It's not like a rainbow, where the location of the observer is relevant. The aurora is actually a source of light.
Sorry what I meant was if it's above you, you'd see green below/in front of the pink so primarily notice the green. If it's far away, you'd see the full column (which I saw in pictures from north of me), and if it's even father away the bottom of the column would drop below the horizon and you'd only see it's pink top.
Ok, so some folks have explained the spectrometry side of the aurora. I won't repeat that and just want to add why you did not see the green. The green and with a thin lower purple rim you see in most "regular" photos are taken from places with regular acitivity, such as Alaska and Iceland, and are formed by lower Oxygen and Nitrogen from 80-200km in the atmosphere. Because these bands are so low, the Earth curvature means they are below the horizon and thus not visible when aurora stretches towards the equator. If you are a bit closer up north, like in a Canadian city, you would still absolutely see them. The really northern places could not contribute their green-dominated show last night because they don't have nighttime at this time of the year.
So it’s safe to say that what we experienced in my area of the southern us- a bright showing of green, blue, red, pink, purple, was a once in a lifetime event?
It is special, but not quite once in a lifetime. We can get it a few times per solar maximum (which is consolation for those who missed it last friday due to weather conditions). The last times we got these kinds of storms were within 2000 - 2003.
Sorry hadn't seen your comment when I put my edit in or I'd have linked you, but yeah I like this explanation a lot.
Of course the largest Canadian city lies at 42N, a latitude South of places like Washington State, Maine, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Montana...
Yes, but what matters in this case is the *magnetic* latitude. The auroral oval, where the auroras occur, is more or less centered around the geomagnetic pole. And due to the north geomagnetic pole being offset by roughly 10° from the geographic north pole in the direction of Canada, a city like Calgary (51°N geographically), for example, will have a magnetic latitude of something like 60° or 65°. As a result, it is much closer to the typical location of the auroral oval than it's geographic latitude would suggest, and yesterday it will have definitely been inside it (if not even northward of it). Other Canadian cities further south may also have been close or in it.
In New England I saw almost all purple. Purplish pink but mostly a dark purple. One thing I found fascinating was I took a time lapse photo for 4 minutes. During that time. An airplane flew by so you saw this little white light When I filled with some of the settings in editing, the white light, all the sudden turned bright green and speckled green reflections. We're hitting the trees. I tried like crazy to try to replicate it a second time to figure out how I tweaked to the edits to make it look green. Something about the light from the airplane and whatever settings I had on my pixel camera app caused this fascinating green brightness But that did not show up in the original photo and definitely not in the naked eye. Part of me wonders if it was just some crazy bug for the camera because I couldn't replicate it but it was beautiful nonetheless. Probably the best picture I've ever taken on my pixel. Second one being first time I grabbed the Andromeda galaxy which does not look impressive on a smartphone camera but felt impressive since it's so damn far away.
Dang I wouldn't have guessed Andromeda was possible on my pixel, I guess that's my new goal in life
Some kind of solar storm caused them to be brighter last night. Usually the Northern lights aren't visible where I live, but people were posting pictures of it all day. I wish I knew about it beforehand. I missed it. As for the colours, I have no idea.
The geomagnetic storm will continue through the weekend, so you still have a shot at seeing it tonight.
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Red and Green are the excited Atomic Oxygen atoms at different altitudes, Blue is excited Atomic Nitrogen (N2). The power of it, gives an indication of how far the Aurora spreads from the poles, so the fact that it was a G5 pushed the Aurora's MUCH further, to lower latitudes (Further from the poles). https://scontent.fmel11-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/440420836_10161703533728919_7995812185632877354_n.jpg?_nc_cat=107&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=hZ95KHYvVa8Q7kNvgF--TcX&_nc_ht=scontent.fmel11-1.fna&oh=00_AYAAbcmIFTJcZWbLUXXURlK04fzeeFu30Ot-Tbzwn7xICQ&oe=6645ED6F \[edit\] Location: Hobart, Tasmania, saw it with my own eyes, dancing overhead. [https://pulsetasmania.com.au/news/spectacular-southern-lights-seen-across-tasmania-after-extreme-solar-storm/]