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Northern Lights!!!!!

wastewaterguru

By wastewaterguru
in Open Water

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M.T. Bucket Rising Star

M.T. Bucket

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Yeah! I was working at one of the CWD test stations, things were running a little longer than we would have liked, when one of the guys coming in pointed up. We all went out back and watched the green and purple shimmering. Pretty cool stuff. One of our volunteers was not from this area and had never seen them before. Great first time.

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wastewaterguru Mentor

wastewaterguru

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11:22 PM and still going. Saw on the news that they expect it to go almost all night. They had some good footage on the news. This was my first time seeing them. Been in Minnesota 7 years, but have never seen them. Thanks for the replies.....at least I know it wasn't my imagination.

Too Cool!

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Dan Thiem Mentor

Dan Thiem

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Very visible from where I was.

Just walking out of the woods back to my truck after buck hunting near Zumbro Falls.

I was thinking, what did early people a long time ago think when they saw the incredible colors and swirls of lights in the sky.

Then I thought what's gonna be The Grebe's explination of it. I'm sure it will be great!

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jegerjack Community Regular

jegerjack

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Had just finished dinner when I saw them, watched them for the next couple hrs... The strib had an article on how they cannot be predicted, so it is neat surprise, especially in a world that everyone seems to know everything before it happens... Got some pics on my camera that I will try to post later...

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sami0115 Rising Star

sami0115

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Amazing down in Winona as well! Usually you have to look to the north to see them the best, but i could look in any direction and they were equally amazing. Taking the dog for a walk last night was very enjoyable.

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sami0115 Rising Star

sami0115

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The Northern lights are poetry, they are nature's light show, and they are quantum leaps in the oxygen atom. They are elementary particle physics, superstition, mythology and fairy tales. The northern lights have filled people with wonder and inspired artists; they have frightened people to think that the end is at hand. More exact explanations of the phenomenon could not be given until modern particle physics were developed, and knowledge about details in the earths magnetosphere has been based on measurements from satellites.

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When the northern lights are seen over Tromsø, it happens in a set pattern, although this pattern varies considerably. The outbursts starts with a phosphorocent glow over the horizon in north west. The glow dies out and comes back, and then an arch is lit. It drifts up over in the sky. And new arches are lit and follow the first one. Small waves and curls move along the arches.

Then within a few minutes a dramatic change is seen in the sky. A hailstorm of particles hit the upper atmosphere in what is called an auroral sub-storm. Rays of light shoot down from space, forming draperies which spread all over the sky. And they really remind us of draperies or curtains which are flickering in the wind. And you can see a violet and a red trimming at the lower and upper ends. Or the colours are mixed all together, woven into each other. The curtains are disappearing and forming all over again by new rays of light shooting down from space. Above our head we cans sen rays going out in all directions forming what is called an auroral corona. After 10 to 20 minutes the storm is over and the activity decreases. The bands are spread out, disintegrating in a diffuse light all over the sky. We can not see individual pockets of light, but the total effect is bright enough to enable us to make out details of the countryside around us. If we look very carefully, we can see the remains of the northern lights display as faint, pulsating flames. Clouds of light which is turned on and off regularly every 5 - 10 seconds as though by an electric light-switch. The natures own gigantic light-show is over.

What causes the northern lights?

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To answer this, we start with the sun whose energy production is far from even and fluctuates on an 11 year cycle. Maximum production coincides with high sunspot activity when processes on the sun's surface throw particles far out in space. These particles are called the solar wind and cause the northern lights.

The sun's surface temperature is approximately 6,000 0C, much cooler than the interior which is several million degrees. In the sun's atmosphere or corona, the temperature rises again to several million degrees. At such temperatures, collisions between gas particles can be so violent that atoms disintegrate into electrons and nuclei. What was once hydrogen becomes a gas of free electrons and protons called plasma. This plasma escapes from the sun's corona through a hole in the sun's magnetic field. As they escape, they are thrown out by the rotation of the sun in an ever widening spiral - the so-called garden-hose effect. The name originates from the pattern of water droplets formed if we swing a garden hose around and around above out heads.

After 2-5 days' travel trough space, the plasma reaches the earth's magnetic field compressing it on the daylight side of the earth, and stretches it into a "tail" on the nightside. A few of the particles penetrate down to the earth along the lines of magnetic field in the polar areas. Most, however, are forced around the earth by the magnetic field and enter the "tail" which stretches out into a long cylinder. Its diameter is equivalent to 30-60 times the earth's radius, and its length up to 1000 times the same radius. It is, in effect, as if the earth's magnetic field creates a tunnel in the plasma current from the solar wind. Inside one end is the earth, and around its surface the earth's magnetism and the solar wind interact.

The magnetic tail is divided into two by a sheet of plasma. The magnetic field lines from the earth's north and south pole stretch out in their respective halves such that the fields are in opposition. The electrons and protons in each half of the plasma rotate in opposite direction forming a huge "dynamo" with the positive pole on the side of the plasma sheet facing dawn and the negative pole facing evening. The "dynamo" is driven by the current of charged particles between the two poles.

Just my opinon cool.gif

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