THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM
70 Falmouth Street Portland, Maine 04103
(207) 780-4249 usm.maine.edu/planet
43.6667° N 70.2667° W
Altitude: 10 feet below sea level
Founded January 1970
2021-2022: XCII
"They say the Universe is expanding. That should help with the traffic."
-Stephen Wright
THE DAILY ASTRONOMER
Monday, March 14, 2022
Aurora ALERT!
No, this time we didn't make a mistake. We also didn't experience the type of space-time laceration that so often affects the Daily Astronomer. We are sending Monday's DA today because we want you to observe the night sky tonight, tomorrow and perhaps even the next day. Why, you might have asked if you hadn't already seen the article title?
Because if you live north of the mid-latitudes, you might well observe an aurora borealis! As you sit there indulging your unhealthy DA addiction, charged particles expelled by the Sun in a coronal mass ejection are slamming the planet's magnetic field broadsides to produce a G-2 class geomagnetic storm. While we don't believe this event will adversely affect our electronic infrastructure, it should produce an auroral oval that could extend down toward southern New England or even beyond.
A coronal mass ejection emitted by the Sun on March 10th and 11th has now reached Earth and might produce an aurora event visible tonight and tomorrow night.
Granted, aurora event prognosticators tend to gulp a bit when announcing their forecasts because "northern lights" exhibitions are notoriously difficult to predict, unlike eclipses or transits. They can only speak in terms of probabilities. That having been said, we suspect, um, that an aurora event is quite likely tonight or tomorrow.
Aurorae occur when charged solar particles excite atoms in the upper atmosphere. An atom is excited when one of its electrons is elevated to a higher energy state. When the electron returns to its original state -which generally happens quite quickly- it will emit a photon, the energy of which equals the energy difference between the original and excited state. We remember that energy is a zero-sum game in the Universe. It can neither be created nor destroyed, but merely changes form.*
We strongly encourage you to venture outside tonight and/or tomorrow night and gaze skyward. Perhaps you will behold the gorgeous spectacle of a northern lights display. Remember also that Northern Lights displays are destined to become less frequent as a consequence of the north magnetic pole's ill-advised migration from Canada into Russia. We should seize every opportunity to witness an aurora.
*Yes, we know that nuclear fusion reactions convert matter into energy. However, these reactions don't "create energy," but instead transmute in from its material form
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