Active Week for Solar Activity

Again tonight, we were blessed with an active Aurora, though at the moment, it's little more than a glowing green fog in the northern sky.

At around noon my time, the first of two distinct shockwaves from CME's impact the Earth, which initiated a strong geomagnetic storm (Kp of 8). The second shockwave took the Bz component northward, and it remained that way until after darkness fell here. Then, around 8:30PM EST, the Bz component measured by the ACE spacecraft went south, giving me about 30 minutes go get out to my dark spot to observe the aurora.

We also had two major flare events occur back at the Sun. One, which happened minutes ago as I write this, was an X2 to X3 event, which likely has a CME associated with it that might have an Earth-directed component (if only a glancing blow, since sunspot 696 is nearing the limb). Give it maybe 3 days for travel, and that means that Friday night/Saturday morning, we'll have more Auroras lighting the sky. Though, I'm not optimistic about having clear skies when it arrives (but, so far, the WeatherChannel is predicting no clouds on Friday night).

Here's wishing you clear skies!