Starship Asterisk*

A Flag Shaped Aurora over Sweden

Explanation: It appeared, momentarily, like a 50-km tall banded flag. In mid-March, an energetic Coronal Mass Ejection directed toward a clear magnetic channel to Earth led to one of the more intense geomagnetic storms of recent years. A visual result was wide spread auroras being seen over many countries near Earth's magnetic poles. Captured over Kiruna, Sweden, the image features an unusually straight auroral curtain with the green color emitted low in the Earth's atmosphere, and red many kilometers higher up. It is unclear where the rare purple aurora originates, but it might involve an unusual blue aurora at an even lower altitude than the green, seen superposed with a much higher red. As the Sun continues near its top level of surface activity, colorful nights of auroras over Earth are likely to continue.

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At last! An intergalactic flag for astronomers, physicists, and their friends!

And also, and MUCH better than the auroras on today's Earth Science Picture of the Day - http://epod.usra.edu/blog/

APOD wrote:
It is unclear where the rare purple aurora originates

It looks quite blue to me.

Congratulations on a very fine picture, Mia! It's so nice to see an APOD by a woman.

Ann

hoohaw wrote:And also, and MUCH better than the auroras on today's Earth Science Picture of the Day - http://epod.usra.edu/blog/

Well the EPOD image was taken from a place that normally doesn't experience aurorae.

I wasn't aware there was a competition between APOD and EPOD.

Ann, over the years (now, many years!) I've seen the number of Astro colloquia presented by women increase dramatically, here at Johns Hopkins, and also at the Space Telescope Science Institute across the street. It is wonderful!

Ann wrote:

APOD wrote:
It is unclear where the rare purple aurora originates

It looks quite blue to me.

Congratulations on a very fine picture, Mia! It's so nice to see an APOD by a woman.

Ann

You have a bias towards blue, you can't see the purple?!

There are very few female amateur astrophotographers, I know of Kerry-Ann Lecky Hepburn and Tanja Schmitz.

Here's another.
http://swagastro.weebly.com/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/swag72/

You could also count Astro Samantha who is a prolific photographer on board the ISS. Anyway, I'm sure there are many others. All the "famous" people tend to be men with the exception of entertainers.

Ann wrote:

APOD wrote:
It is unclear where the rare purple aurora originates

It looks quite blue to me.

Congratulations on a very fine picture, Mia! It's so nice to see an APOD by a woman.

Ann

Thank you!

/Mia

geckzilla wrote:Here's another.
http://swagastro.weebly.com/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/swag72/

You could also count Astro Samantha who is a prolific photographer on board the ISS. Anyway, I'm sure there are many others. All the "famous" people tend to be men with the exception of entertainers.

And they are very good at bringing out the "art" in astrophotography. What's left is "so photography" and I love it! Thanks Geck and your kind – the ladies of astronomy. And those guys too. There's enough talent to go " 'round" the world ".

Edit - I think I'll "second" my own adulation after going through Sara's flickr images such as "The Spider"

https://www.flickr.com/photos/swag72/12819544953/

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1001/IC417tsounis.jpg

Both quite nice though I would have liked to have found a real spider (on her site) for comparison.

starsurfer wrote:

Ann wrote:

APOD wrote:
It is unclear where the rare purple aurora originates

It looks quite blue to me.

Congratulations on a very fine picture, Mia! It's so nice to see an APOD by a woman.

Ann

You have a bias towards blue, you can't see the purple?!

There are very few female amateur astrophotographers, I know of Kerry-Ann Lecky Hepburn and Tanja Schmitz.

There are quite a few female amateur astrophotographers actually
You'll find a lot of them on Twitter for example.

/Mia Stålnacke

What a fantastic aurora shot! Of course one would think of a flag or curtain, but I'm also struck, for the first time ever on viewing an aurora photo, of the relationship to a rainbow! Although the source of the phenomenon is so totally different, one can definitely see a progression here from purple to red to green, and even at the bottom left, I see a touch of orange.

And here's a crazy question. Has anyone (okay, a group project, unless it's from space) ever observed auroras at both poles simultaneously? Is there any correlation? I would expect a positive correlation as a first guess, just in that we see more auroras when Sol is more active, and I don't see how that would strictly prefer on pole at a time.

geckzilla wrote:Here's another.
http://swagastro.weebly.com/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/swag72/

You could also count Astro Samantha who is a prolific photographer on board the ISS. Anyway, I'm sure there are many others. All the "famous" people tend to be men with the exception of entertainers.

Ooh I forgot about Sara Wager!! I love her widefield of the Crescent Nebula that also includes the Soap Bubble Nebula and the rarely seen nebula associated with the LBV star P Cygni.

AngryTheInch wrote:

starsurfer wrote:

APOD wrote:
It is unclear where the rare purple aurora originates

You have a bias towards blue, you can't see the purple?!

There are very few female amateur astrophotographers, I know of Kerry-Ann Lecky Hepburn and Tanja Schmitz.

There are quite a few female amateur astrophotographers actually
You'll find a lot of them on Twitter for example.

/Mia Stålnacke

I'm not on any social networking websites, so I wouldn't know. One of my favourite astronomers is Williamina Fleming, discoverer of the Horsehead Nebula and many other deep sky objects. I also admire Caroline Herschel for all her discoveries, my favourite of which is NGC 225.

MarkBour wrote:... Has anyone (okay, a group project, unless it's from space) ever observed auroras at both poles simultaneously? Is there any correlation? ...

Here's a bit of an answer I found to my own question: http://www.aurorasaurus.org/ .
Though currently, they seem focused on the Aurora Borealis, I'm hoping they'll become popular and expand to a world-wide view.