Sky Wonders: Aurora Borealis!

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November 08, 2004

Aurora Borealis!

Wow! Every day a new wonder! Yesterday observers in Utah and Colorado reported seeing Northern Lights!

The cause was an intense electromagnetic eruption from the solar region near sunspot 696, a CME (coronal mass ejection), that hit earth head-on yesterday. A cool graphic on the SOHO website shows the extent of the aurora in the north, covering all of Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Russia, half of the US and half of Europe!

What is a CME? The SOHO website defines it as "A huge magnetic bubble of plasma that erupts from the Sun's corona and travels through space at high speed".

Check out a CME in action! Click on the image below for a cool MPG:

For size comparison, the white circle in the center of the image is an outline of the sun's disk.

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