fbpx
  • Subscribe & Support
  • Print Edition
    • Get Home Delivery
    • Read ePaper Online
    • Newsstand Locations
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Contact
    • Advertise
    • Submit Your Event
    • Customer Support
    • Submit A News Tip
    • Send Letter to the Editor
    • Where’s My Paper?
  • Our Newsletters
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Free HV1 Trial
Hudson Valley One
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s UP
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Subscribe to the What’s UP newsletter
  • Opinion
    • Letters
    • Columns
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Log Out
No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s UP
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Subscribe to the What’s UP newsletter
  • Opinion
    • Letters
    • Columns
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Log Out
No Result
View All Result
Hudson Valley One
No Result
View All Result

The Aurora Borealis will soon be back

by Bob Berman
April 1, 2016
in Columns
0


“Are we there yet?” asks the impatient youngster on a family vacation. And that’s the same question posed by the world’s aurora-watchers waiting for the current solar cycle to reach its peak.

Well, we’re almost there: Sunspot cycle number 24 is heating up. Two weeks ago, the strongest solar storm in years sent a shotgun blast of broken atom fragments in our general direction, and we got grazed enough to have had major displays not too far north of us. The Northern Lights also increase around the Equinoxes, when Earth and its magnetic field are sideways to the Sun. So the trigger may be primed just a few weeks from now, in March and April, for one of Nature’s greatest spectacles.

We’ve come a long way since the last high-level maximum, when sunspot cycle 22 peaked in 1989. On March 13 that year, a dazzling dusk-to-dawn aurora lit up the sky over our region from horizon to horizon. Huge electrical discharges coursed along the ground beneath the pulsating lights, tripping circuit breakers, plunging Quebec into darkness and causing garage doors throughout North America to open and close on their own.

But back then we did not have today’s never-sleeping sentinels: SOHO, SDO, STEREO and other satellites watch violent clouds of plasma (broken atom fragments) break loose from the Sun at two million miles per hour to hurl the energy of one billion hydrogen bombs in our direction. The ACE spacecraft, hovering sunward of Earth, measures the actual subatomic debris as it sweeps by, to provide an hour’s warning of an imminent impact.

Initially flowing past us, some particles snap back and reverberate between Earth’s magnetic poles to create simultaneous auroral displays at both locations. Photos show that the complex glowing designs at each pole are exact mirror images of each other. Yet every aurora is just a segment of an enormous, spooky green ring hovering around each pole. Places like Fairbanks, Alaska that sit right below the glowing donut enjoy displays nearly every clear night.

The shimmering pale curtains with pink fringes typically occupy much of the Alaskan sky, but the displays around here often present a different face. Alaskans commonly gaze straight up from beneath the shimmering curtains, while we see them more obliquely from the side, which can actually ratchet up their majesty.

Still, it’s not truly rare for mid-Hudson observers to find themselves right under an expanded auroral oval during times of intense solar activity. We had wonderful displays here in 2000 and 2001. The unpredictability of the patterns is part of their lure. One may see rapid-fire split-second changes, or the pale green (or rarely, deep red) designs may unfold in slow motion, as glowing rays, blotches, arcs, lines, curtains or combinations – along with a profound accompanying silence that seems thoroughly out of place, given the sky’s visual turmoil.

Websites that may provide warning of solar storms and auroral action include www.gi.alaska.edu/auroraforecast and https://sec.noaa.gov/forecast.html, while www.spaceweather.com presents today’s conditions in an attractive format. For the more technically minded, even actual real-time activity detected by ACE is accessible at www.sec.noaa.gov/ace/mag_swepam_24h.html. This last site is meaty. Your key to reading the data is: You want to see the topmost white trace near the top, the density plot to be way over 10 particles per cc and the speed plot to be over 600 km/sec.

Once alerted, your own backyard is as far as you need travel around here, as long as the night is clear and the Moon not fat – unless you’re in the middle of Kingston, in which case a quick drive to the mountains is in order. But even in this high-tech age, many warnings prove to be false alarms. The people who catch the best auroras are those who simply check the northern sky from time to time on clear and especially moonless nights. For after seven years of low or nonexistent auroral activity around here, the next two years will almost definitely bring the glorious lights southward, to amaze those of us who cannot make an Alaskan pilgrimage.

 

Join the family! Grab a free month of HV1 from the folks who have brought you substantive local news since 1972. We made it 50 years thanks to support from readers like you. Help us keep real journalism alive.
- Geddy Sveikauskas, Publisher

Bob Berman

Bob Berman, Ulster Publishing’s Night Sky columnist since 1974, is the world’s most widely read astronomer. Since the mid-1990s, his celebrated "Strange Universe" feature has appeared monthly in Astronomy magazine, the largest circulation periodical on the subject. Berman is also the long-time astronomy editor of the Old Farmer’s Almanac. He was Discover magazine’s monthly columnist from 1989-2006. He has authored more than a thousand published mass-market articles and been a guest on such TV shows as Today and Late Night with David Letterman. Berman is director of two Ulster County observatories and the Storm King Observatory at Cornwall. He was adjunct professor of astronomy and physics at Marymount college from 1995-2000.

Related Posts

This week’s total eclipse
Columns

Science from your car

July 8, 2025
Blue: Your favorite color
Columns

Blue: Your favorite color

June 24, 2025
How we see each other and ourselves
Columns

How we see each other and ourselves

June 16, 2025
Suddenly summer
Columns

Suddenly summer

June 11, 2025
Outer space clickbait
Columns

Outer space clickbait

June 11, 2025
What the newspapers said 100 years ago
Columns

What the newspapers said 100 years ago

June 2, 2025
Next Post

Bricks and mortar: Onteora buildings in need of repair

Weather

Kingston, NY
88°
Thunder in the Vicinity
5:32 am8:31 pm EDT
Feels like: 93°F
Wind: 8mph S
Humidity: 61%
Pressure: 29.98"Hg
UV index: 2
TueWedThu
90°F / 70°F
91°F / 73°F
91°F / 73°F
powered by Weather Atlas

Subscribe

Independent. Local. Substantive. Subscribe now.

  • Subscribe & Support
  • Print Edition
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Contact
  • Our Newsletters
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Free HV1 Trial

© 2022 Ulster Publishing

No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Art
    • Books
    • Kids
    • Lifestyle & Wellness
    • Food & Drink
    • Music
    • Nature
    • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Subscribe & Support
  • Contact Us
    • Customer Support
    • Advertise
    • Submit A News Tip
  • Print Edition
    • Read ePaper Online
    • Newsstand Locations
    • Where’s My Paper
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Log In
  • Free HV1 Trial
  • Subscribe to Our Newsletters
    • Hey Kingston
    • New Paltz Times
    • Woodstock Times
    • Week in Review

© 2022 Ulster Publishing