[at-l] Fwd: Aurora Warning

[askowronek@mindspring.com (Amy)]

rick boudrie wrote:

>> and I aways thought a mass ejection was the day after final exams.>
>>
> 
> A month or two back we went to check out the telescopes at Harvard's 
> observatory. They open up in conjuction with a club meeting once a 
> month, I think.  It was cool, but the really neat thing is that the club 
> had a speaker from their Astrophysics Dept with more letters after his 
> name than could possibly fit on a business card talk about these coronal 
> mass ejections to the public.  He was good. Not only do these mass 
> ejections make the arora more spectacular, he said they once were 
> responsible for shutting down the power grid in Quebec!  What's more 
> interesting still is that none have yet been directed in the right (wich 
> is to say wrong) direction to really screw things up with our GPS, TV, 
> radio, phones and electronics of all kind.


Working at the Solar Data Analysis Center, I've gotten some very 
interesting questions about the aurora from the general public -
including from people at utilities.  In theory, another outage like
what happened in Quebec can't happen again.  On the other hand,
our power grid is way interconnected.  I betcha it could happen
on a larger scale.  :)

It's not that surprising that none have been directed just right.
The sun can erupt in any direction, and remember that it's over
a sphere, not just 360 degrees around two axes.  We are a tiny,
tiny target compared to the volume of space around the sun at
our radius.

Satellites have been damaged by solar storms in the not too distant
past, too.  I can't remember when the last one went.. two years
ago?

Along the same lines are sprites and jets.  The aurora is visible
from space as well as the earth, and there are these curious
fountains of light up into space from the aurora.  Very nifty.


-amy