I went to the Robert Ferguson Observatory on Saturday evening. So did a lot of other people. The gathering was to see a rare event, the aurora borealis. Usually, northern lights are confined to latitudes far north of Sonoma County. But if you were lucky and looking at the sky around midnight, shimmering colors like this were on display this past weekend!
The electromagnetic storm creating these colors tipped 5 on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s G-scale, which goes from 0-5.
Fun facts: Northern lights are produced by geomagnetic storms which come from solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) from the sun. Solar flares are electromagnetic radiation, while CMEs are bursts of plasma with magnetic fields.
Plasma is the fourth state of matter. Solid, liquid and gas are three states of matter; plasma, the fourth, represents 99% of matter in the universe. It is rare on Earth, though it is seen in lightning, fluorescent bulbs and TV screens.
Plasma is superheated matter. Electrons are stripped away, forming an ionized gas. Ionized gasses, either positive or negative, conduct electricity and are thought to have an infinite capacity for conduction.
All elements in the Periodic Table have one kind of atom and those atoms are electrically neutral, exhibiting a balance of positive protons, negative electrons and neutral neurons. Non- neutral atoms are called ions, with anions negatively charged and cations positively charged.
Quantum mechanics suggest electrons are both points and waves. Imagine people closely packed together in a room and one person is trying to get to the other side. That person jostles other people while moving.
Similarly, an electron’s charge affects surrounding electrons due to a magnetic field causing wave-like action exciting nearby electrons while still being a particle moving. CMEs, plasma ejections from the sun, travel at different speeds. Some CMEs take days to reach Earth, others arrive in as little as 15 hours. Light from the sun arrives in 8 minutes.
Hopefully you were among the lucky that observed this weekend’s light show. I was not. I left the observatory before 11:30pm; this picture was taken by a friend in Ellensburg, Washington.
