[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

Re: (meteorobs) A BRIGHT AURORA ON THURSDAY EVENING!

Good call Joe!  My Earth Science students here in Central Virginia saw the display also. I was sitting in a Graduate Class Session at Lynchburg College until almost 9:30 PM EDT.  There was no display in progress between 9:30 and 10 PM, when I often look at the sky driving to my rural home from class.
            In Astronomical Affinity - Felix

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: Skywayinc@aol.com
Reply-To: meteorobs@jovian.com
Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 10:02:28 EDT

>    Sky watchers in Westchester County, N.Y. got an unexpected sky show on 
>Thursday evening: a view of the aurora borealis.  So bright was this aurora, 
>that it was visible even from a brightly-lit parking lot in Yonkers, NY!
>
>    On Wednesday night, I prepared an animated graphic for my evening 
>weathercast showing how the crescent Moon would interact with Mars, Jupiter 
>and Saturn during the next couple of evenings.  I told viewers that the best 
>time to look would be " . . . on Thursday evening, as soon as it gets 
>sufficiently dark -- around 8:15 p.m."
>
>    Although I was aware of the alert issued on SpaceWeather.com concerning 
>an interplanetary solar shock wave striking Earth on Thursday afternoon, I 
>didn't mention anything about it on my Thursday weathercast because of 
>several false alarms in recent weeks.  I did, however, remind everybody about 
>looking for the the Moon and planets.
>
>    At 8:15 p.m., I was out in the brightly-lit parking lot of News 12 
>Westchester with cameraman Barry Gerber taking a shot of the Moon and planets 
>for our 10:00 Night Edition show, when I took a glance overhead and saw a 
>distinct glow about 15 to 20 degrees in diameter, shining with a 
>beet-red-type hue.  I suspected that this might be an aurora, but because of 
>the surrounding lights I could not really be sure.  I called my wife at our 
>home in Levittown, Long Island and asked her to go into our backyard and tell 
>me if she saw anything unusual.  About 30 seconds later she returned 
>excitedly saying that there was a "crimson red glow high in the southern sky 
>and nearly overhead."  
>
>    A few minutes later, Barry and I were in one of the News 12 vans, heading 
>into the nearby Lenoir Nature Preserve where we had access to darker skies.  
>>From there, I could see much of Orion and Taurus enveloped in a deep-red 
>aurora.  We stayed until 8:45 p.m. EDT, as the ruddy auroral glow began to 
>rapidly fade out.  We also saw a few narrow white rays moving rapidly across 
>Orion from west-to-east.
>
>    Upon returning back to the television station, our assignment desk had 
>received more than a half-dozen phone calls in quick succession between 8:15 
>and 8:30 p.m., all inquirying about " . . . that weird red glow."  Most of 
>the calls were from rural northern Westchester which is significantly less 
>light-polluted than the more urbanized southern part.  It is obvious that 
>many of these folks were probably drawn outside by their wanting to see the 
>Moon and three planets and in the process got a chance to see another kind of 
>celestial display! 
>
>    Although auroral activity never revived during the overnight, as I drove 
>back home to Long Island later that night, I noticed the inability of being 
>able to hear any distant radio stations on my car radio.  Signals that would 
>normally "boom-in" under the cover of darkness (such as WBZ in Boston, WGY in 
>Schnectady and WHAS in Louisville, KY) were either faint to completely 
>inaudible, indicating that there were some sort of significant atmospheric 
>disturbance churning up the ionic sea above.
> 
>    According to the NOAA Space Environment Center's Space Weather Office, 
>the magnetic K-Index attained a level of 8 on a 0-9 scale from 21:00 UT on 
>April 6 to 03:00 UT on April 7.  This corresponded to 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. EDT 
>on the evening of April 6.  Typically, a K index of 6 suggests the 
>possibility of sighting an aurora as far south as the latitude of New York 
>City.  According to SpaceWeather.com, last night's display was reported as 
>far south as North Carolina!
>
>-- joe rao 
>To UNSUBSCRIBE from the 'meteorobs' email list, use the Web form at:
>http://www.tiacdot net/users/lewkaren/meteorobs/subscribe.html
>
To UNSUBSCRIBE from the 'meteorobs' email list, use the Web form at:
http://www.tiacdot net/users/lewkaren/meteorobs/subscribe.html