http://spaceweather.com/A solar wind stream hit Earth's magnetic field during the late hours of Saturday, Feb. 18th, sparking a G1-class geomagnetic storm. Usually, auroras produced by such a mild storm would be confined to Arctic latitudes. Not this time. Northern Lights spilled across the Canadian border into US states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, North Dakota, Nebraska and Minnesota. Bob Conzemius video-recorded the display from the Chippewa National Forest north of Grand Rapids, MN:
February 18, 2012 Auroras in Chippewa National Forest, Grand Rapids, MN"It was fun watching the auroras illuminate the fog and snow on the lake while listening to barred owls calling," says Conzemius. "I may have heard a couple wolves howling in the distance, too."
In Nebraska "I saw auroras on and off for approximately 2 hours from around 9pm to 11pm local time," reports Chris Allington of Crofton, NE. "There was a brief spell where color was visible to the eye with rays and bands." Allington stitched together a series of 20s exposures to create this movie.
Brief Aurora TimelapseAll of these shots are taken with a Canon T1i, 18mm, 1600 iso for 20 seconds.
At the height of the display, researchers at the Poker Flats Research Range outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, launched a suborbital rocket to investigate how auroras affect GPS systems. Several photographers in the area caught the rocket flying into the Northern Lights.
The surprising display might have been amplified by the action of a co-rotating interaction region or "CIR." CIRs are transition zones between fast and slow solar wind streams. Solar wind plasma piles up in these regions, producing density gradients and shock waves that do a good job of sparking auroras. Local solar wind data suggest that Earth moved through a CIR around 1500 UT on Feb. 18th.
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