Feel the Breeze?

The Solar and Heliospheric Observer sent along a picture of a huge coronal hole that’s opened up on the Sun recently (it’s that dark area to the upper right of the three sunspots and their associated magnetic fields.

There’s a brisk solar wind breeze blowing out from this hole, which will buffet Earth’s upper atmosphere for a while. This image shows the Sun in extreme ultraviolet wavelengths. The Earth is right smack in the center of the breeze, which is causing some nice auroral displays at high latitudes. What’s happening is that high-speed plasmas in the solar wind are colliding with the upper part of our atmosphere and our magnetic field. This heats the gas molecules up there and causes them to glow.

Here’s a nice image on Spaceweather.com, taken by Sylvain Serre in Nunavik, Quebec that shows what happens when the solar wind smacks our upper atmosphere around. Serre and some friends were out viewing the sky when the auroral display started up and basked in the glow for while. There’s a good chance that there’ll be more auroral displays the next couple of nights, so if you live in an area where such things light up your sky, check ’em out!