Weekend Auroras Fill the Sky!

By Nancy Atkinson - July 1, 2013 at 3:25 PM UTC | Planetary Science
aurora-collin.jpg

I was personally

so pumped

to have seen the Aurora Borealis over the weekend in Central Minnesota! It was a beautiful display of a green and white glow with high, towering, bright spires. Unfortunately, I was in the car at the time, and I definitely need to upgrade my camera to be able to take images of the aurora. But lucky for us, astrophotographers from both hemispheres captured gorgeous shots of the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis.

According to

SpaceWeather.com

, the Earth passed through a region of south-pointing magnetism in the solar wind on June 28, "and the encounter set off one of the finest geomagnetic storms of the current solar cycle."

This shot from Colin Chatfield shows the awesome auroral scenes over Saskatchewan.

[caption id="attachment_103219" align="aligncenter" width="580"]

The northern lights on June 28/29, 2013 as seen from the Wintering Hills WInd Farm near Drumheller, Alberta. Credit and copyright: Alan Dyer/Amazing Sky Photography. [/caption]

James Stone from Opossum Bay, Tasmania captured this video of the Aurora Australis:

To see some images from the southern hemisphere,

Ian Musgrave has put together a great collection at his Astroblog site.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com