Aurora over Nebraska last night

This is the second time that I know of that the Northern Lights descended this far south. On October 25 2011 they descended as far south as Alabama!

This is from Spaceweather.com. I like the 30 second clip because of the contrast of the wind turbines and the time lapse stars.

"NORTHERN LIGHTS OVER NEBRASKA: A solar wind stream is buffeting Earth's magnetic field, causing magnetic unrest and auroras at high latitudes. Last night faint Northern Lights descended all the way south to Nebraska. Click to view a movie of the display, photographed by Chris Allington of Crofton, NE:"

Comments

  1. Beautiful! When I lived in Manitoba I could hear the Northern Lights, such a nice crackling sound.

    Pretty cool that you can see them so far south.

    Blessings,
    <><

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  2. I saw them once while I lived in Maine, and I heard them crackle too. Eerily beautiful. The Nebraska guy was surprised to see them too. Apparently a crack appeared in the magnetosphere and allowed supercharged solar wind to stream in. He said the display lasted 4 hours, from 10 pm to 2 am. I bet in Manitoba it was a frequent occurrence, and the sound pretty loud ...?

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    1. Yes the sound was really loud and every night during the winter months. One thing was lacking and that was the colours. These NL's were white. My niece lives in Yellow Knife and she says the NL's are really colourful and loud; very majestic.

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  3. White! Go figure! I learn something new every day. Also learned that people live in Yellow Knife! LOL, just kidding :)

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  4. We saw the aurora in Colorado Springs in the late '80's. Beautiful pink and green curtains one night, dancing all over the night sky for hours. Another night they were a pale green 'rainbow' shape in the far north and east of Denver. My son and mother saw them one night in the early 2000's, also in Colorado. My great-grandfather saw them many times from his homestead in eastern Colorado in the very early 1900's. Part of the problem with people not seeing them very often now is light pollution. Another part is people are too busy watching movies or tv to go outside and LOOK at the heavens! Mars is beautiful right now - and did you see the conjunction of Jupiter, Venus and the Moon? Beautiful!! All praise to our Father in Heaven, the Creator of heaven and earth!

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    1. I tried to point out the moon, venus and Jupiter's convention in the heavens to as many people I could! So many never noticed but as soon as you really look, you can't help bit marvel. I remember watching a talk about how the plants converged the night Christ was born and how there were even signs in the heaven when He died. Just amazing.

      Also, I did not know you could HEAR Auroras! So much to learn about God's creation! I remember watching a documentary about the earth that obviously rejected the idea of a creator. Interestingly when a scientist Or narrator was commenting bout the earth's Magnetic field and all it's "coincidental" relationships that serve to protect the earth and make it what it is, they said it's amazing how the earth has exactly what it needs to support and protect life. Of course that line of thought stopped there. You'd think scientists would be the ones supporting the idea of a creator more than anyone. Only in an upside down world.

      Anyway, God's creation is so wonderful and He is so majestic and can't even imagine how beautiful the earth will be when it is restored!

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  5. Also just saw this on BBC news:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17539315

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  6. Debbie, thanks for the link!

    The auroras(according tot he scientific definition,) "energetic electrically charged particles (mostly electrons) accelerate along the magnetic field lines into the upper atmosphere, where they collide with gas atoms, causing the atoms to give off light. " The more particles, the more electricity, the more noise they will make. I've heard them as a low hum, like electricity through a wire, and as a crackle like static electricity makes when rubbing a balloon on your hair. Spooky but cool.

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  7. Strange. I was always told that you cannot hear the aurora. All the dozens and dozens of times I watched them in Alaska I never heard them. I could hear the blood rushing through my veins, I could hear my heartbeat, I could hear a car turning off a highway 5 miles away and starting down our road out in the bush, I could hear snow squeaking under my boots and my parka rustling as I moved, I could hear my breathing against the scarf across my face, I could hear an occasional dog or wolf howl in the far distance. Total silence except for those things - and the aurora danced in the night sky directly above my head the whole time. Very good information is found here: http://www.auroraborealisyukon.com/faq/ and here is more from the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks:
    "9) Can you hear the aurora?
    Maybe.
    This is a difficult question to answer. It is easy to say that the aurora makes no audible sound. The upper atmosphere is too thin to carry sound waves, and the aurora is so far away that it would take a sound wave 5 minutes to travel from an overhead aurora to the ground. But many people claim that they hear something at the same time when there is aurora in the sky. I am aware of only one case where a microphone has been able to detect audible sound associated with aurora ( Auroral Acoustics: the web site does not have sound samples, but you'll find a link to a very nice and in depth paper there). But one can not dismiss the many claims of people hearing something, and this is often described as whistling, hissing, bristling, or swooshing. What it is that gives people the sensation of hearing sound during auroral displays is an unanswered question. By searching for an answer to that question, we will probably learn more about the brain and how sensory perception works than about the aurora.

    Links for further and more detailed information:

    Poker Flat FAQ: Sound?

    The Lion Roars

    Radio transmission from the aurora (RealAudio from National Public Radio)" http://odin.gi.alaska.edu/FAQ/#hear

    One of my favorite oldies:
    (C.W. McCall, Bill Fries, Chip Davis)
    One night last summer we were camped at ten thousand feet up where the air is clear, high in the Rockies of Lost Lake, Colorado. And as the fire burned low and only a few glowing embers remained, we laid on our backs all warm in our sleeping bags and looked up at the stars.
    And as I felt myself falling into the vastness of the Universe, I thought about things, and places, and times.
    I thought about the time my grandma told me what to say when I saw the evening star. You know, Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.
    The air is crystal-clear up here; that's why you can see a million stars.
    I remember a time a bunch of us were in a canyon of the Green River in Wyoming; it was a night like this. And we had our rafts pulled up on the bank an' turned over so we could sleep on 'em, and one of the guys from New York said, "Hey! Look at the smog in the sky! Smog clear out here in the sticks!" And somebody said, "Hey, Joe, that's not smog; that's the Milky Way."
    Joe had never seen the Milky Way.
    And we saw the Northern Lights once, in the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana. They're like flames from some prehistoric campfire, leaping and dancing in the sky and changing colors. Red to gold, and blue to violet... Aurora Borealis. It's like the equinox, the changing of the seasons. Summer to fall, young to old, then to now. And then tomorrow...
    And then everyone was asleep, except me. And as I saw the morning star come up over the mountains, I realized that life is just a collection of memories. And memories are like starlight: they go on forever.

    Read more: C.W. MCCALL - AURORA BOREALIS LYRICS http://www.metrolyrics.com/aurora-borealis-lyrics-cw-mccall.html#ixzz1qa92IA7e
    Copied from MetroLyrics.com

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    1. Hi Anonymous, They just conformed that the Northern Lights makes noise. Read more here
      http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/07/10/156539388/listen-you-can-hear-the-northern-lights-researchers-say

      "Either way, it's kind of cool that researchers from Finland's Aalto University say they've confirmed something that's long been the stuff of folktales: The northern lights do make noises that can be heard down on the ground. There's video — with sound — supporting their case."

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  8. I can find just as many links that say they do make sounds. It is a point of controversy whether they make noise, but it is hard to refute centuries of eyewitness (earwitness) accounts.

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