Posted on 02/01/2012 8:24:04 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Explanation: Why would the sky glow red? Aurora. Last week's solar storms, emanating mostly from active sunspot region 1402, showered particles on the Earth that excited oxygen atoms high in the Earth's atmosphere. As the excited element's electrons fell back to their ground state, they emitted a red glow. Were oxygen atoms lower in Earth's atmosphere excited, the glow would be predominantly green. Pictured above, this high red aurora is visible just above the horizon last week near Flinders, Victoria, Australia. The sky that night, however, also glowed with more familiar but more distant objects, including the central disk of our Milky Way Galaxy on the left, and the neighboring Large and Small Magellanic Cloud galaxies on the right. A time-lapse video highlighting auroras visible that night puts the picturesque scene in context. Why the sky did not also glow green remains unknown.
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The amount of stars that are seen is amazing too!
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WOW!
It’s definitely worth seeing the larger versions as well. :’)
First time I ever looked at one of your astronomy threads SC.
A city dweller often has no idea as to how many stars are in the sky, until they get out of the city for a night.
I like to leave the city, at least every couple of months for a few hours, just to look at the sky.
I have to go about 50 miles out to really get a good look.
The Aussies think that's a big thing? Huumph...... They obviously don't realize that stars once fell on Alabama. Jimmy Buffett even sang about it: "Stars Fell on Alabama".
Beautiful....worth watching the time lapse video he posted also!
The video is stunning in HD. At first I thought the lights going across the horizon were cars, but I don’t see a bridge or road during daylight. They must be ships that look like they’re moving faster than they really are, due to time-lapse photography.
Hold your digital camera up to the night sky and click the shutter: for a second, the camera tries to gather all the light it can, and the number of stars dramatically increases. (Try it, that is, if you want to feel even smaller). :)
Another Beauty!
Beautiful, SunkenCiv! The colors remind me of rainbow sherbet.
Truly beautiful, SC.
Thank you.
That’s a whole lotta stuff packed into one photo! Simply amazing! What hath God wrought?
Obama, for one thing. Guess somebody really ticked him off.
:’) Thanks for the kind remarks and all the info.
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