(via kittenn-blood)
The last couple years I’ve gone far enough North in Canada to have some chance of seeing the Aurora Borealis but still have not. You have to get lucky with good clear skies and the right solar wind conditions or live in Norway.
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Goddamnit! One of these days I’m going to actually get to see the aurora.
A solar outburst sparked surprising displays of the northern lights as far south as Arkansas, Mississippi and North Carolina tonight, marking one of the farthest-reaching auroral shows in years.
As word spread about the geomagnetic storm, photos streamed onto the Web from the usual places, such as Norway, Sweden and Iceland, but also from locales that are typically too far south to see the northern lights: Oklahoma … Kansas … Kentucky … Tennessee … Virginia.
Among the websites tracking the fireworks are SpaceWeather.com, the Weather Channel and Universe Today.
Arkansas photographer Brian Emfinger (whose photo of the “southern Lights” is seen above) was alerted to the northern lights by SpaceWeather.com’s aurora alert. “I ran out and put my camera out and immediately saw reddish aurora,” he wrote. “I ran out into the field, and within a few minutes the aurora went crazy!”