• Storming sun sets the skies aglow

    Laurent Silvani

    The northern lights shine over La Baie in Quebec at 2 a.m. Saturday, in a picture taken by Laurent Silvani. To see more of Silvani's work, check out his Silvani.ca website and his Facebook page.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News


    A slight solar storm ejected from a powerful sunspot sparked northern lights as far south as Colorado on Friday night — and there should be more to come.

    The heightened aurora was sparked by a burst of electrically charged particles thrown off from an active spot on the sun known as Region 1748. That region is the one responsible for four powerful X-class flares that blasted out from the sun this week. Region 1748 is just now turning in our direction, and forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center say it has the potential to throw some hefty storms our way.

    Storms from the sun have the potential to disrupt satellite communications and power grids, and in extreme cases, the radiation risk could force airlines to reroute their intercontinental flights to lower latitudes. But Joe Kunches, a spokesman for the prediction center, said experts now have much better capabilities at their command to reduce the risks. And so far, he said, the active sun has been throwing "softballs" at us — at least compared with bigger flare-ups like the Halloween storms of 2003 or the Bastille Day storm of 2000.

    The most noticeable effects of recent solar disruptions have come in the form of enhanced auroral displays. SpaceWeather.com reports that faint glows were recorded Friday night in Colorado as well as Vermont, New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Washington state.

    Farther north, the fireworks show was significantly brighter. Astrophotographer Laurent Silvani captured some great images from Quebec's Saguenay region, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Quebec City.

    "Following a magnetic storm, the aurora borealis was particularly visible in the sky with its waves and colors. A particularly beautiful sight!" he wrote in an email. "Many people from the Saguenay do not know that there are auroras occasionally here. They are surprised to see my pictures every time."

    Check out Silvani's website and Facebook page for more.

    For additional views of auroral glories — including, yes, some photos of the southern lights as seen from Antarctica —take a spin through SpaceWeather.com's photo gallery. And who knows? You might be able to catch the show yourself over the next couple of nights. Another geomagnetic storm is expected to sweep over Earth's magnetic field on Sunday, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center.

    To find out what can be seen from where, keep an eye on the center's Facebook page as well as its Ovation aurora forecast maps. If you're in the aurora zone, the best time to look is after midnight. The best places are far away from city lights, with clear, crisp skies. Got pictures? Share them with us via NBC News' FirstPerson photo upload page.

    While you're waiting for those dark skies, feast your eyes on these beautiful time-lapse aurora videos, plus our slideshow: 

    Shawn Malone presents North Country Dreamland from LakeSuperiorPhoto on Vimeo. "All scenes are within approximately 200 miles of my home in Marquette, Michigan," he writes. "This video is my first time-lapse compilation of a resultant 10,000 photo frames equaling 33 scenes of various night sky events from Northern Michigan 2012. It took a year to shoot and a bit of tenacity and persistence to get this into a form of coherent electrified cosmic goodness." You'll see northern lights as well as meteors and other wonders. For the best effect, watch it at full screen in HD. And for more from Malone, check out his website and Facebook page.

    Thomas Kast presents Aurora - Queen of the Night on Vimeo. "After a long winter here in Finland with many beautiful northern lights, I'm very happy and proud to share my timelapse video of the aurora borealis with you," Kast writes. "This is the result of almost 60 nights outdoors between September 2012 and March 2013. Some of the scenes are shot on the frozen Baltic Sea, some in Lapland and most around Oulu, where I live."

    Slideshow: Lights in the sky

    Click through stunning images of the auroral displays created by geomagnetic storms.

    Launch slideshow

    More auroral glories:

    Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log and the rest of NBCNews.com's science and space coverage, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Astronomers kick off search for Saturn's northern lights

    Modified version of image from NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute

    Water particles flow from Saturn's rings into the planet's atmosphere along magnetic field lines.

    By Miriam Kramer
    Space.com

    Astronomers using an observatory in Hawaii kicked off a month-long campaign to study the northern lights on Saturn study Sunday in a live webcast from Hawaii's iconic Keck Observatory.

    During a three-hour webcast, scientists discussed everything from the ringed planet's atmosphere to new discoveries made about the gas giant in the last year. While speaking with the public via social media, the researchers also used the Keck Observatory to observe auroras on Saturn to understand how the mysterious phenomenon works. The scientists weren't able to show live-video of the observations, but they did review some major Saturn discoveries during the webcast.

    "Up until now, it's like we have been looking at the aurora in black and white — and now we're trying to look in color," Tom Stallard, an astronomer at the University of Leicester who participated in the observations, said in a statement. "We're hoping to get much more depth to the observations we have taken — filling in a far more complete picture of the aurora as a whole, rather than disconnected parts." [See Amazing Photos of Saturn's Rings]

    The month-long campaign organized by astronomers from the University of Leicester in the U.K. brings together an international group of observers using the Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn, the Hubble space telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile. Over the course of the next month, scientists will take observations of the ringed beauty to understand its northern lights.

    Yesterday, scientists were following up on their surprising finding that Saturn's rings cause it to "rain" on the planet. This "ring rain" on Saturnchanges the molecular composition of the planet's atmosphere, potentially creating its distinctive dark and light bands on the planet's face, the author of the study, James O'Donoghue, said.

    NASA / JPL/ University of Leicester / University of Arizona

    Composite image of Saturn shows the entire planet, including the rings as seen by NASA's Cassini spacecraft from the south. The green glow represents aurora lights.

    The ring rain could be responsible for influencing the auroras of the planet. By using this observing time from Keck, the scientists are hoping to understand exactly what that influence could be.

    "The weather wasn't great at that time," O'Donoghue said of the two hours it took them to make the ring rain discovery. These new measurements are going to focus on refining those results, O'Donoghue added.

    Auroras on Earth are created when charged particles from the sun shoot toward the planet. The particles are trapped in Earth's magnetic field and are pulled into the planet's atmosphere, creating the brilliant light show at the poles.

    This time of the Saturnian year is particularly important for observations of Saturn because the planet's seasons are shifting. The gas giant is about to enter into its seven-year-long spring, and scientists are hoping to observe the planet's new season from as many different angles as possible.

    The Keck Observatory, located on the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, houses two 33-foot (10 meters) telescopes that observe in both the optical and infrared range of light.

    The Cassini spacecraft — managed by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency — has been in orbit around Saturn since 2004 and is now on an extended mission that will last until at least 2017.

    Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

    Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • Northern lights dance with a comet

    Swedish photographer Goran Strand created a 10-image mosaic of the sun using a hydrogen-alpha filter on March 16, and then captured full-sky views of the northern lights over Ostersund during a four-hour period on March 17 for this time-lapse video. "The time lapse consists of 2,464 raw images for a total data amount of 30GB. ... All in all, this movie contains over 40GB of data that I've been processing over the last five days. Hope you enjoy it," Strand writes. Watch the video in full-screen HD for maximum effect. Music: "I Am a Man Who Will Fight for Your Honor," by Chris Zabriskie.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News


    Talk about dancing with the stars: The glow of the northern lights danced through the night sky this week, thanks to a solar storm that swept past Earth over the past few days. Comet PanSTARRS, which is appearing a little bit farther north in western skies every evening, adds some extra sparkle.

    The time around the equinox is considered the peak of the aurora season, because this time of year strikes a balance between the dark skies of winter and the more clement temperatures of summer. And although PanSTARRS may not have panned out the way some of the more optimistic skywatchers might have expected, it's still observable in the Northern Hemisphere — particularly if you're watching with binoculars from a vantage point far from city lights, with a clear view to the western horizon.

    Sky & Telescope's PanSTARRS page helps you track the comet day by day, and you can always rely on SpaceWeather.com to have the latest, greatest pictures of PanSTARRS as well as the auroral glow.

    For example, French photographer Sylvain Dussans managed to capture both phenomena in one glorious picture, taken from Norway's Senja Island.

    Here are a couple more videos of the solar storm and the comet, as seen from Earth and space:

    Chad Blakley, the photographer behind Lights Over Lapland, captured this time-lapse view of the northern lights and Comet PanSTARRS in Sweden's Abisko National Park on March 20 and posted the picture on Vimeo. "The auroras began as soon as the sun went down and continued to dance all night long," Blakley said in an email. "To say that we had an incredible night would be a huge understatement!" For best results, watch the video in HD at full-screen.

    Chad Blakley / Lights Over Lapland

    This closeup from Chad Blakley's video uses a black circle to highlight the comet's location. For more, check out Blakley's Lights Over Lapland page on Facebook.

    This movie from NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, or STEREO, shows Comet PanSTARRS as it moved around the sun from March 10 to 15. The clip is repeated three times. The images were captured by the Heliospheric Imager, an instrument that looks to the side of the sun to watch coronal mass ejections as they travel toward Earth, which is the unmoving bright orb on the right. The bright light on the left comes from the sun, and the bursts from the left represent the solar material erupting off the sun.

    More about the comet and the aurora:

    Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log and the rest of NBCNews.com's science and space coverage, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Sun eruption supercharges northern lights displays

    ESA & NASA/SOHO

    The European Space Agency and NASA Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) captured these images of the sun spitting out a coronal mass ejection on March 15, 2013.

    By Tariq Malik, SPACE.com

    A massive eruption on the sun Friday unleashed a wave of intense solar particles at Earth that may spark a geomagnetic storm and boost weekend aurora displays.

    The Earth-directed solar storm occurred Friday at 2:54 a.m. EDT (0654 GMT) in what astronomers call a coronal mass ejection — or CME — a sun eruption that can release billions of tons of solar material into space. The particles typically take between one and three days to reach Earth, where they can pose a hazard to satellites and electronic systems in orbit and on the planet's surface, NASA officials said in a statement.

    The solar particles from the Friday eruption were expected to reach Earth Sunday.

    "High-latitude and possibly even middle-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras this weekend," the website Spaceweather.com, which tracks space weather and stargazing events, said in a weekend alert. [Amazing Auroras Photos of 2013]

    The Friday sun eruption sent a wave of solar particles streaking toward Earth at about 900 miles per second, according to observations by NASA and European spacecraft. That is the equivalent of a mind-boggling about 3.2 million miles per hour (5.2 million km/h).

    According to NASA, this "is a fairly fast speed for CMEs. Historically, CMEs at this speed have caused mild to moderate effects at Earth."

    The solar eruption should not pose a threat to satellites and spacecraft around Earth, but it may pass NASA's Messenger spacecraft orbiting Mercury and the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope, agency officials said. NASA alerted the mission operation centers for both missions.

    "There is, however, only minor particle radiation associated with this event, which is what would normally concern operators of interplanetary spacecraft since the particles can trip on board computer electronics," NASA officials said.

    An alert by the Space Weather Prediction Center operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that the Earth's geomagnetic field could be at "unsettled to major storm levels" once the CME particles reached Earth Sunday. There was a 70 percent chance of a geomagnetic storm today, the Spaceweather.com alert added. 

    When the sun fires off an eruption in Earth's direction, the charged solar particles that reach the planet are funneled to the Earth's poles by its magnetic field. When the particles interact with the Earth's atmosphere, they can cause a glow visible from the ground: the northern lights.

    Northern lights displays over the North Pole region are known as the aurora borealis. Their southern counterpart is known as the aurora australis.

    The sun is currently in the midst of an active phase of its 11-year solar weather cycle and is expected to reach its peak activity in 2013.

    Editor's note: If you snap an amazing photo of the northern lights in the night sky, or any other celestial object, and you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, please send images and comments, including location information, to managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

    Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

    Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

     

  • Make the most of the northern lights

    Chad Blakley / Lights Over Lapland

    The northern lights shimmer in the skies above Abisko National Park in Sweden on March 3. "In addition to the northern lights, you can also see a massive fireball streak across the sky," photographer Chad Blakley writes. "It was a fantastic night!"

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News


    It's prime time for the northern lights, and particularly for the far northern lights.

    "I believe I just saw the most amazing aurora display I have ever seen," Chad Blakley, the photographer behind Lights Over Lapland, wrote from Sweden over the weekend. "I would send you more images, but I have to go back outside and take a few more photos first." (You can see the results in the time-lapse video below.)

    Places like Sweden and Norway, Iceland and Finland, Alaska and Canada's Northwest Territories are prime viewing areas for the northern lights, because that's where the interactions between Earth's poles and the sun's geomagnetic storms are strongest. The fact that the sun's 11-year activity cycle is close to its predicted maximum should be adding to the show, although the storm activity has been mysteriously low so far. 

    There's another factor that makes this month favorable for seeing the northern lights: Experts say that March and September, around the time of the year's two equinoxes, are just right for aurora-watching because the skies stay dark for a relatively long time, and yet the weather is relatively mild. December can get pretty chilly up north, and June is the time of the midnight sun — which is not conducive to seeing the aurora's delicate greenish glow.

    Darkness is the key to seeing the aurora, whether you're in Abisko National Park in Sweden, or in Albany, N.Y. Stake out a place that's far from city lights with good northern exposure. The thinner and clearer the air, the better — which means you should be up on a mountain rather than down in a valley. The wee hours of the morning are the best time of night for spotting the northern lights.

    If you're not in the prime aurora zone, spotting a good display is a matter of good timing, good luck and location, location, location.

    Auroral displays are seldom seen much farther south than the northern tier of U.S. states, but every once in a while there's a strong storm that lights up the skies in America's midsection. To find out when a storm is brewing, check in with SpaceWeather.com, the University of Alaska's Aurora Forecast website and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center, plus the prediction center's Facebook page and its Ovation aurora forecasting app. The Yukon Territory's Northern Lights Centre provides additional tips for aurora-watchers. You can also follow @Aurora_Alerts, @AuroraMax and @AuroraWatch on Twitter. 

    If you live too far south to see the lights with your own eyes, don't despair: You'll find plenty of auroral pictures in SpaceWeather.com's gallery, and Vimeo has lots of videos to show you. Got a great picture of the northern (or southern) lights? Feel free to share it via our FirstPerson photo-upload page. 

    Aurora Borealis in Abisko National Park. March 3rd, 2103. from Lights Over Lapland on Vimeo.

    More auroral glories:

    Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Take a minute to spend the night with northern lights

    Chad Blakley / Lights Over Lapland

    The northern lights vie with a waxing moon over Sweden's Abisko National Park on Monday night.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News


    One look at SpaceWeather.com's aurora gallery will tell you that February has been a very good month for auroral displays in northern latitudes, and an upswing in solar activity promises more to come.

    One of the hot spots is Sweden's Abisko National Park, which is the favorite hangout for Chad Blakley of Lights Over Lapland. "We have seen powerful auroras in the sky above Abisko for 13 nights in a row, and it looks like there are more to come!" he wrote in an email Tuesday. "Last night I witnessed one of the finest aurora displays I have seen in many months. February 2013 is turning out to be one of the best months for aurora watching I have ever seen!"

    You can get a sense of how Blakley's nights have been going by taking a minute to watch Blakley's time-lapse video below. But don't stop there: I'm also including a time-lapse from Helge Mortensen, a photographer based in Tromso, Norway, and from Oli Haukur and the OZZO Photography team in Iceland.

    Scandinavia, Alaska and northern Canada are all hot spots for the northern lights this time of year, even though it gets chilly at night. The auroral displays might dip farther south if we get a nice geomagnetic storm coming our way, and the solar weather outlook suggests that could happen. A new sunspot region known as AR 1678 has cropped up, and SpaceWeather.com says this region could give rise to "a significant solar flare."

    Check out the usual places for space weather updates, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center as well as the center's Facebook page and its Ovation aurora forecast chart. You'll also want to keep tabs on the Canadian Space Agency's AuroraMAX website — and the Lights Over Lapland Facebook page, where you'll find an awesome image of the aurora glowing beside a moon halo.

    Aurora Borealis over Abisko National Park Feburary 18th, 2013 from Lights Over Lapland on Vimeo.

    Aurora from 17th of February 2013 from Helge Mortensen on Vimeo.

    Northern Lights In Iceland V3 from O Z Z O Photography on Vimeo.

    More auroral glories:

    Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Northern lights boosted by 'The Blob'

    Thomas Kast

    The northern lights glow over a snowy Finnish landscape in a photo taken on the night of Jan. 16-17 by Thomas Kast. Watch the time-lapse video on Vimeo.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News


    "The Blob" from the sun has come and gone, sparking nothing more than beautiful views of the northern lights — and there could be more blobs to come.

    This week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center reported that a "plasma blob" of electrically charged particles was thrown out from the sun in Earth's direction — but that the outburst, also known as a coronal mass ejection or CME, wouldn't disrupt satellite systems or electrical power grids when it swept past us on Thursday.

    The blob did register on the geomagnetic scale, but well below hazardous levels, just as the center predicted. And although there were no flashy light shows reported in America's Lower 48 states, the northern lights were dancing in high-latitude regions. Thomas Kast caught his first aurora of the new year in the skies over Rokua in Finland.

    Kast said the vantage point for the picture you see here is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from his home — and the temperatures dipped down to 16 below zero Fahrenheit (-27 degrees Celsius). "I spent more than four hours at that spot," Kast said. "It takes time, but it's so rewarding."

    If you like the picture above, you'll love the video version that Kast has just posted to his Vimeo gallery. To see more of Kast's photos, check out his Facebook page as well as his posting to SpaceWeather.com's aurora gallery.

    Göran Strand saw this week's auroral show from the Kall area in the Swedish municipality of Åre, where the temperature was 11 below zero F (-24 degrees C). "When we arrived at the location and stepped out of the car, a moose stepped out of the forest and looked at us, and it looked a bit surprised finding us there in the middle of the night," Strand said in an email.

    "It turned out to be a fantastic night with a half moon that lit up the landscape in a lovely way," Strand told SpaceWeather.com." In the background you can the mountain Åreskutan, the biggest ski resort in Sweden."

    For more astrophotography from Strand, click on over to his Astrofotografen website and his Facebook page.

    Goran Strand

    Swedish astrophotographer Goran Strand captured this view of an aurora lighting up the night sky above a moonlit landscape. The constellation Orion, the Pleiades and the planet Jupiter also gleam in the skies above.

    Stian Rekdal

    The northern lights compete with the city lights of Ålesund, Norway, in a picture taken by Stian Rekdal.

    Meanwhile, in Norway, Stian Rekdal lucked into a glittering photograph of natural and artificial lights.

    "It was taken from the viewpoint of Fjellstua (literal translation, 'the mountain lodge'), which is approximately 400 feet above the town of Ålesund," Rekdal wrote in an email. "Aurorae are not as common here as farther north. This part of Norway is also prone to cloudy weather, further decreasing the odds of spotting them. So last night was a rare treat."

    Check out more of Rekdal's aurora imagery at the 500px photo website, or the Vimeo video portal. As a bonus, you can feast your eyes on Rekdal's Vimeo video below — but be sure to watch it at full-screen and high-resolution. Then click through our slideshow of the greatest hits from the northern (and southern) lights.

    LYS:Ålesund from Stian Rekdal on Vimeo.

    Slideshow: Lights in the sky

    Click through stunning images of the auroral displays created by geomagnetic storms.

    Launch slideshow

    The Space Weather Prediction Center says that two more coronal mass ejections are heading toward Earth — but like the earlier plasma blob, these outbursts "are not expected to be very strong." To find out where auroral displays are expected to glow, check NOAA's Ovation chart, the prediction center's website, the University of Alaska Geophysical Institute's aurora indicator or SpaceWeather.com. And if you snap a great picture of the aurora, feel free to share it via the Cosmic Log Facebook page or NBC News' FirstPerson photo upload page.

    Update for 3 a.m. ET Jan. 21: Aurora photographer Chad Blakley took the stunning still imagery he captured on Jan. 19 and assembled into this must-see time-lapse video on Vimeo. "The solar blob you wrote about last week has made its way to Earth!" he wrote in an email. For more, check out Blakley's Lights Over Lapland website and Facebook page.

    Powerful Auroras dancing over Abisko National Park on January 19, 2013 from Lights Over Lapland on Vimeo.

    More auroral glories:

    Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

     

  • A solar 'blob' is coming, but this show won't be scary

    Chad Blakley / Lights Over Lapland

    Auroral lights glow in the skies over Sweden's Abisko National Park on Jan. 13.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News


    It might sound scary to hear that a giant blob of solar plasma is heading straight for us, but don't panic: Space weather forecasters say this solar outburst should deliver nothing more than a spectacular show up north.

    "We're not going to be in for a big disturbance," said Norm Cohen, senior forecaster at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado. "The northern tier of the United States might be able to see aurorae."

    The outburst of electrically charged plasma — also known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME — blasted out from the sun on Jan. 13, sparking a radio blackout. It's taken several days for the blob itself to travel the 93 million miles between the sun and here, but forecasters now expect it to sweep over Earth's magnetic field early to midday Thursday.

    When strong solar storms interact with the magnetosphere, they can spark satellite outages and disrupt electric power grids. Fortunately, this one shouldn't be that strong. (In geekspeak, let's just say that the maximum Kp is expected to reach no higher than 4. NOAA's space weather scale lays out the effects associated with higher Kp levels. Check out the prediction center's Facebook page for space weather updates.)

    The most visible effect should be the northern lights generated by the interaction between the electrically charged solar particles and atoms in Earth's upper atmosphere, as explained on the "Causes of Color" website. This week's geomagnetic flare-up should add to what's already been a great week for auroral displays in northern latitudes.

    Chad Blakley, a photographer at Sweden's Abisko National Park, sent in the beauty you see above. "It looks like there may be more powerful auroras in the days ahead," Blakley said in an email. "It is a very good time to be an aurora photographer!"

    For more of Blakley's beauties, check out the Lights Over Lapland website or the LOL Facebook page.

    Glowing reports are coming in from space as well. Here's a picture captured by the Department of Defense's DMSP F-18 OLS low-light imager on Jan. 13. The green outlines show Ireland and Britain down south, and Iceland and Scandinavia up north. The ghostly wisps crossing the frame are the northern lights. It's conceivable that the bright streaks you see in this satellite picture are the same ones visible in Blakley's pictures.

    DOD via Mark Conner / SpaceWeather.com

    The northern lights show up as ghostly streaks of white in a satellite picture captured on Jan. 13 by a low-light imager on the Defense Department's DMSP F-18 meteorological satellite.

    Aurora photographer Chad Blakley (www.lightsoverlapland.com) shot this time lapse of an aurora shimmering through the clouds over Abisko National Park in Sweden on the night of Jan. 13. The video was assembled from nearly 3,000 still images.

    Are there more solar blasts heading our way? SpaceWeather.com notes that a complex sunspot region known as AR1654 is pointing in our direction and has the potential to send more big blobs of plasma our way. But Cohen said the worries about that particular sunspot have been receding.

    "It's been fairly quiet in terms of flare production," he said. "If anything, it's beginning to show signs of decay."

    In fact, there's been increasing talk that this year's expected peak of the sun's 11-year activity cycle could be relatively wimpy. Cohen said he didn't want to make that sweeping of a prediction — but he did admit that there hasn't been as much disruption as some people might have feared.

    "The activity hasn't been all that impressive yet," he said.

    More auroral glories:

    Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Northern lights blaze again on video

    Fresh solar winds made for a spectacular light show on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News




    Skywatchers as far south as Colorado and Kansas witnessed a quick flare-up of the northern lights this week, which called to mind the brilliant, beautiful displays that northerners saw earlier this year. The skies have settled down — for now — but developments on the sun suggest we could be in for another wave of auroral glories.

    The greenish glow over Lake Superior, recorded from Michigan's Upper Peninsula at 2 o'clock in the morning by Shawn Malone of LakeSuperiorPhoto.com, was impressive enough to make NBC's "Nightly News" on Tuesday night. In an email, Malone told me that the "intensity caught me off guard."

    "Check out the passing freighter for scale," Malone said in his comments on the Vimeo version of the video. "What a view those sailors must have had!"

    Mark Riutta had a similar view from Copper Harbor Cabins on the Upper Peninsula, as the time-lapse video below illustrates. Riutta told me over the phone that he and his girlfriend were getting the cabins ready for the summer season and were surprised by how bright Tuesday's display turned out to be. "We were just about to go to sleep, when we looked out and wondered, 'Why is it so light out there?' he said.

    Aurora Borealis over Copper Harbor - April 24th, 2012 from Defined Visuals on Vimeo.

    SpaceWeather.com provides a roundup of auroral images from a dozen U.S. states, mostly in the Midwest but also including the top state for the northern lights, Alaska. And speaking of Alaska, here's an unconventional view of the aurora that was recorded from a height of 90,000 feet during "Project Aether: Aurora," a scientific experiment that took place this month:

     

    A GoPro HD Hero2 camera captured this view of the northern lights, set against a backdrop of the curving Earth and the glow of sunlight at the horizon. A second Hero2 camera was placed in the frame and illuminated to serve as a reference point for the camera exposure (as well as a plug for GoPro).

    Project Aether, led by University of Houston physicist Ben Longmier, sent up almost two dozen weather balloons laden with high-definition cameras and scientific instruments to monitor auroral activity near Fairbanks. Most of the payloads have been recovered, but the student researchers are still on the lookout for a few that haven't yet been located. If you happen to be in the Fairbanks area and find one of them, you could win a prize.

    More prizes could be in store for aurora-watchers: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center reports that we're currently in the midst of a minor geomagnetic storm, which could spark another wave of northern lights. What's more, an active region of the sun known as AR1465 has developed the type of magnetic field that's associated with stronger X-class outbursts.

    To keep tabs on the solar weather report, check in with SpaceWeather.com as well as the Space Weather Prediction Center's website and Facebook page. And to watch some classic auroral videos, check out the gallery offered by NASA's Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.

    More auroral glories:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto,"my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

  • Northern lights make for must-see TV

    The northern lights glow green and red in a time-lapse view recorded from the International Space Station on Jan. 22.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News




    The aurora's glow makes for thrilling photographs, but let's face it: The shimmer of the northern lights is a big part of the appeal. Here are three time-lapse video views looking at the northern lights from above and below, plus still-photo highlights from the past day or two.

    The International Space Station's view of the green and red aurora was recorded back on Jan. 22, but the clip is part of a batch of seven night-flight videos released on Thursday via the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. The shots were snapped as the station soared from the Pacific Ocean, west of San Francisco, northeast across the United States toward Saskatchewan in Canada. The camera is looking northward, and to my mind, the presence of the station's solar panels and robotic arm in the foreground is a plus, not a minus. For a sharper version, go directly to the high-resolution QuickTime video.

    The aurora most commonly takes on a greenish hue, but when electrically charged particles from the sun interact with atomic oxygen at higher altitudes — say, up to 200 miles — the glow turns red.

    The past week has been a godsend for aurora-watchers, thanks to a series of outbursts from an active region on the sun, but now the solar storms have settled down. Observers caught the tail end of the heightened activity on Thursday night in regions of Scandinavia, Iceland, Scotland, Greenland and North America, as well as Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica in the south. Check SpaceWeather.com as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center for updates. And check out this album of videos and photos from all over:

    Icelandic photographer Olafur Haraldsson posted this fantastic aurora collection from March 15 on Vimeo. Haraldsson says the clip still needs some tinkering "and some nice music to go with it," but I think it's fine just the way it is, particularly at full screen in HD.

    Here's a far subtler view of the aurora as seen from Maywick Beach in the Shetland Islands on March 15 by Alan of the North and posted on Vimeo. The time-lapse video condenses 18 minutes of observations into 32 images, looped seven times at 10 frames per second.

    Iurie Belegurschi

    Iceland's Iurie Belegurschi offers this stunning picture of the aurora with the Venus-Jupiter conjunction shining in the sky, off to the right. For more of Belegurschi's photography, check out his Facebook page.

    Andrei Penescu

    Andrei Penescu captured this view of the northern lights on March 15 from Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. "Tonight was very special because it was the first time I've seen the sky full of red auroras. ... It was the best aurora show I've ever seen!" Penescu told SpaceWeather.com. Check out the gallery at SpaceWeather.com.

    Minoru Yoneto

    A red and purple auroral display lights up the skies over Queensland, New Zealand, in this March 16 view from Minoru Yoneto. "The auroras danced until sunrise," Yoneto told SpaceWeather.com. Check out the imagery on SpaceWeather.com.

    More auroral glories:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

  • Northern lights shine through a crack

    Andrei Penescu

    The northern lights shimmer over Kangerlussuaq in Greenland on Feb. 27. "Out for about two hours in -36 degrees Celsius until my fingers gave up, but what a nice show!" Andrei Penescu told SpaceWeather.com. "I didn't get out too far from the town, and had a lot of light pollution, but the aurora was very bright."

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News




    A "crack" in Earth's magnetic field has opened the way for yet another thrilling display of the northern lights near the top of the world.

    We're in the middle of an upswing in the sun's 11-year activity cycle, leading up to an expected peak in 2013. If solar storms get too intense, there could be a heightened risk of outages in satellite communication and electrical grids. But fortunately, the only significant effects from the solar outbursts so far have come in the form of heightened auroras, occasionally ranging as far south as Nebraska.

    Auroras arise due to the interaction of Earth's magnetosphere with electrically charged particles streaming from the sun. That interaction energizes atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen in the ionosphere, causing ripples of greenish and reddish light between 60 and 200 miles up in Earth's polar regions.

    SpaceWeather.com's Tony Phillips reports that the interplanetary magnetic field tipped south this week and opened a crack in our planet's magnetic shield to fuel a minor G1-class geomagnetic storm. The Space Weather Prediction Center said the storm was sparked by particles sent out from the sun during an eruption last Friday.

    You can see the atmospheric physics at work in the picture above, captured by Andrei Penescu in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, on Feb. 27. Fittingly, Kangerlussuaq is home to the Sondrestrom Upper Atmospheric Research Facility, a project that studies the aurora and other atmospheric phenomena.

    Here are a few other photos from this week's auroral displays, plus two video extras. One is "Temporal Distortion," a time-lapse tribute to the aurora and other wonders of the night sky by Dakotalapse photographer Randy Halverson. It includes some of the auroral imagery we featured back in October, and features original music by Bear McCreary, the award-winning composer for TV shows such as "Walking Dead" and "Battlestar Galactica."

    The other is David Peterson's compilation of time-lapse videos captured by astronauts on the International Space Station, including some primo views of the aurora from above. Here's what NASA's Mike Fossum, a former space station resident, had to say about the clip: "This is the best video I've seen from photos we took on ISS! Stunning!!"

    Can't argue with that...

    Aaro Kukkohovi

    Finland's Aaro Kukkohovi saw an aurora of a different color burst forth on Feb. 27 in the skies over Lumijoki. "I've never seen anything close to this," Kukkohovi told SpaceWeather.com. "What a fantastic burst of energy - like something blew a hole into Earth's magnetic field just above us." For more from Kukkohovi, check out the gallery at the LumiSoft website.

    AuroraMAX / CSA

    The AuroraMAX wide-angle camera snapped this picture of the northern lights over Yellowknife in Canada's Northwest Territories early Feb. 27. For more from AuroraMAX, check out the project's website and Twitpic gallery.

    Randy Halverson's "Temporal Distortion" time-lapse sky video features an original score by composer Bear McCreary.

    David Peterson's compilation of space station videos is accompanied by "Freedom Fighters" by Two Steps From Hell.

    More auroral glories:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

  • Rocket flies into the northern lights

    A two-stage Terrier-Black Brant rocket arcs through an auroral display 200 miles above Alaska's Poker Flat Research Range as the MICA mission investigates the underlying physics of the northern lights. In this long-exposure photo, the rocket's first stage has just separated and is seen falling back to Earth. The green arc toward the top of the photo is a scientific laser that's shooting into the sky to make profiles of the atmosphere. The beam only appears curved due to the wide-angle lens used to capture the photo.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News




    A rocket experiment sampled the stuff of the northern lights over the weekend, adding some scientific substance to the great auroral views we've been getting from Earth and space.

    Saturday night's launch from the Poker Flats Research Range in Fairbanks, Alaska, was part of a NASA-funded mission called the Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Coupling in the Alfven Resonator, or MICA for short. The project involves researchers from the University of New Hampshire, Cornell, Dartmouth, the Southwest Research Institute, the University of Oslo and the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

    A two-stage, 40-foot-tall Terrier-Black Brant rocket was sent arcing through the aurora to a height of 186 miles, sending down a real-time data stream as it flew. The payload was recovered 200 miles downrange, UNH said in a news release.

    MICA's aim is to measure electric and magnetic fields and sample the charged particles in Earth's upper atmosphere while they're under the influence of a form of electromagnetic energy known as Alfven waves. These waves are thought to spark a particular type of auroral display: a well-defined band of shimmering lights, about six miles (10 kilometers) thick and stretching east to west, from horizon to horizon.

    The northern (and southern) lights are the result of interactions between Earth's magnetic field and electrically charged particles streaming from the sun, in a region ranging from 60 to 200 miles or more in altitude. The mechanism behind the Alfven-wave displays is thought to be like a guitar string that gets "plucked" by energy delivered to the magnetosphere by the solar wind, said Marc Lessard, a UNH space physicist and one of the leaders of the MICA campaign.

    "The ionosphere, some 62 miles up, is one end of the guitar string, and there's another structure over a thousand miles up in space that is the other end of the string. When it gets plucked by incoming energy, we can get a fundamental frequency and other 'harmonics' along the background magnetic field sitting above the ionosphere," Lessard said in the news release.

    Physicists think the "string" takes the form of a beam of electrons accelerated by solar energy. "The process turns on an auroral arc, and then these waves develop on both sides of the resonator moving up and down. That's the theory, and it appears to be valid, but there's never been any really good measurement of the process in action. That's what MICA is all about," Lessard said.

    Donald Hampton

    A fisheye view of the Terrier-Black Brant rocket's ascent is captured by an automated camera near the entrance gate at the Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska.

    In Alaska, a two-stage rocket is helping scientists understand how the lights are formed and how they impact satellites. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

    The mission gathered data about other auroral phenomena as well. Cornell University's Steven Powell, another leader of the MICA campaign, reported in an email today that the initial results look promising.

    "We can tell from the stripchart recordings that we have made excellent measurements of the electric fields, magnetic fields and charged particles (electrons and ions) associated with the aurora," he wrote. "These stripchart recordings are much like a patient's EKG in a hospital, and give us a 'quicklook' real-time glimpse of our data, so that we know that our instruments worked properly and the data quality is excellent.  The detailed digital data was written onto data CDs, and our graduate students and scientific staff look forward to analyzing the digital data in the coming weeks and months."

    February has been a good month for the northern lights, and last weekend was particularly good. SpaceWeather.com's Tony Phillips reported that Saturday night's light show extended as far southward as Iowa and Nebraska.

    He said the display may have been intensified by the presence of a co-rotating interaction region, or CIR. Solar wind plasma tends to pile up in such regions, and that generally sparks better-than-usual auroras.

    To see more of the results, check out SpaceWeather.com's aurora gallery, plus this video from Minnesota:

    The northern lights glow in a video recorded on Saturday night by Bob Conzemius in Chippewa National Forest, north of Grand Rapids, Minn. "It was fun watching the auroras illuminate the fog and snow on the lake while listening to barred owls calling," Conzemius told SpaceWeather. com. "I may have heard a couple wolves howling in the distance, too."

    The views have been great from the International Space Station as well. NASA's Gateway to Astronaut Photography From Space is offering a fresh batch of aurora videos from late January and February, including this must-see moonlit view of an outer-space passage from the North Pacific to the North Atlantic:

    This Feb. 4 video was taken by the International Space Station's crew during a pass from the North Pacific Ocean, just west of Oregon, to the North Atlantic Ocean, east of Nova Scotia.

    More auroral glories:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.