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Saturday, November 5, 2011

Now That's What I Call Radiation!

About two weeks ago I looked up into the evening sky and saw a pale, blood red glow.  I thought I was observing the Sun's reflection off of some localized pollution source.  Yet I had never seen it before.

Turns out....it was radiation!!!

It was basically the radiation effect known as the Northern Lights.  But I live in the southern U.S.!

It was the result of a huge coronal mass ejection from the Sun on October 22.  A coronal mass ejection (CME) consists primarily of protons and electrons but may contain heavier ions.  NASA's STEREO spacecraft (they see both sides of the Sun, not in line with the Earth, but from "the side" relative to Earth's position) provided a video below.

The Sun is intentionally blacked out so it doesn't wash out the CME.  The Earth would be way off to the left from the video's perspective.




I should have grabbed my camera to capture the effects at home!

The Sun sent out a couple of large CME's a couple of days ago.  One went Earth-ward.  This video shows what went Venus-ward:

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