Found this on the Astro mailing list regarding last night's auroral activity
here in North America:
> For those interested in the specific trigger of last night's auroral
> display, the following brief excerpts from NOAA's "spaceweather.com"
> website reveal some of the story:
>
>
> AURORA BLAST: A fast-moving coronal mass ejection that billowed
> away from the Sun on Nov. 4th swept past our planet at 0150 UT on
> Nov 6th (8:50 p.m. EST on Nov 5th). The impact triggered a severe
> geomagnetic storm -- now subsiding -- and widespread auroras reaching
> as far south as Alabama and Texas in the United States.
>
> * * *
>
> RADIATION STORM: Our planet remains inside a stream of energetic solar
> protons accelerated by Sunday's X1-class solar flare and coronal
> mass ejection (CME). The ongoing radiation storm reached severe
> (S4) levels on Monday, but is subsiding now that the CME has
> passed our planet.
>
> * * *
>
> The flux of energetic protons near our planet soared
> 10,000-fold after a solar explosion on Nov. 4th.
And I had to be in the city at the time. Oh well, at least skies were clear.
Garth
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