THE SCALE OF AMAZING
A slow but dense solar wind stream is buffeting Earth’s
magnetic field, igniting bright auroras around parts of the Arctic
Circle. “Wow!” says Fredrik Broms of Kvaløya, Norway. “On the scale of
amazing, the sky went from 0 to 100 in only five minutes.” He took this
picture on Dec. 1st:
“The
sky has been clear for several days without a trace of any auroras here
in the north, but tonight all this changed in an instant,” he adds. “I
witnessed one of the most powerful coronas in a long while with an
exceptionally distinct band of purple-pink from excited nitrogen
molecules at the lower edge. A wonderful start of December!”
More auroras could be in the offing as Earth penetrates this stream
of solar wind, which is flowing from a coronal hole on the sun. NOAA
forecasters estimate a 20% chance of high-latitude geomagnetic activity.
[Source]
More Aurora photos here: Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
Thanks to: http://philosophers-stone.co.uk