Awesome St. Paddy's Day aurora! Awesone photos!

[Panich52]

Awesome St. Patrick’s Day aurora – March 17, 2015 – from Pekka Isomursu in Finland.

A coronal mass ejection, or CME, hit Earth’s magnetic field early yesterday morning (March 17, 2015) and sparked a wonderful geomagnetic storm, the strongest geomagnetic storm of the current solar cycle – sporadically peaking at G4 intensity on the five-point scale. Before sunrise on March 17, people in several northern U.S. states including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Montana, the Dakotas and Washington reported auroras. Of the early-morning March 17 display, Colin Chatfield in Canada wrote:

I have been fortunate to take thousands of aurora pictures previously, but this was the best display I have ever seen.

More pix
http://earthsky.org/todays-image/awesome-aurora-march-17-18-2015?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=6fd5a540e3-EarthSky_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-6fd5a540e3-393525109

[freshwest]

1. Thanks for posting this. Another beautiful view:

[Panich52]

8. Thx f/ pic. Know where that was taken?

[Pooka Fey]

2. Beautiful photo

[marym625]

3. That's just absolutely beautiful!

One of the things on my bucket list is to see the aurora bolrealis.

[obxhead]

4. ditto and its near the top.

[catbyte]

5. I saw an aurora like that in northern lower MI in the early 1970's. Most spectacular thing ever.

The sky was covered & could actually hear it buzzing. Incredible.

[Panich52]

7. I got a glimpse of aurora once -- in WV! It was very early 60s. Could just see the green above trees

[freshwest]

9. Oddly enough, I saw some in, of all places, near Houston, Texas in that time frame.

Fortunately, no trees obstructed the view. It was a very active solar period then.

My dad was in the Seabees in WW2 and taught me some constellations. At that time we could see the Echo satellite night and day. He used to tease me about things in the sky that just didn't seem to move right, that they might be UFOs.

When I went to college and took Astronomy we went out on field trips outside the city lights when we could see Mars, Saturn and Jupiter with the naked eye. But we had a great telescope to see Saturn's rings.

Later I lived on some land high up in the southwest and saw all the famous comets in the news in the 1990s. You could see them day and night as they made the journey across the western part of my place. All the colors they made, too.

Very unusual sights out there then, not just that. There were sunrises on my east side that seemed to take up the horizon, I'd never seen such an odd thing. They looked close enought to burn the Earth. I've since learned that is from an atmospheric anomaly.

Also saw Moons that were huge and red, more impressive than the old 'harvest moons' people used to talk about.

Some things we saw in the sky out there, were kind of spooky. Almost UFO level type stuff. That was during the time that desert areas reported cattle multilations and people were a bit freaked. I don't know if all of that was a hoax, but the ideas was creepy.

We'd also see lights hovering, no sound, that went in square patterns. They'd stop and go back and forth, sometimes the vehicles with the lights, which you couldn't see, came close to each other and stopped.

Later I was told they were government copters (still, no sound) looking for something.

I digress, as usual when I go down the paths in my memory.

Where I live now is closer to the areas associated with auroras, but the clouds and street lights always get in my way and I can't see them, not from my place, anyway. I do see the occasional seaplane and helicopter, but not much.

I visited a friend not that far away now who can see the stars and planets which he finds with an app that shows where they are. On the deck, in an area where all the lights are kept off by the neighbors, I could see the planets, Venus, Mars and others, it was so very clear up there, I was amazed.

This is what the ancients saw without our diversions and light pollution. Apparently they had the leisure to stay up late and ponder it all. People now act like ants, following the schedules others have set, hard to get outside with the time and space to appreciate things.

Had you seen this video of auroras from Alaska?

I listen to it to get in a good mood and ready to sleep...

[BobTheSubgenius]

6. Why oh why did I never get to see the AB like this???

I was in the Yukon in winter, but the AB looked identical to wispy clouds. Terribly underwhelming.