Just a week ago there was a large solar storm that produced (as I have read, but not seen :() a large aurora. Next weekend is the Leonid meteor shower. This got me thinking. What are the effects of a large meteor shower if there’s a decent aurora event taking place at the same time? After all, meteorites produce nice ionization trails, auroras are caused by ions, etc. Is there any record of two such events coinciding?
There was an auroral display corresponding with the Perseids in August, 2000. (It also corresponded to a cloudy night in New England, as per usual whenever there’s interesting stuff going on up there.)
From all the reports I’ve heard, the effects were largely that it was pretty damn cool to watch.
There might still be pictures on spaceweather.com.
While I can’t factually answer your question, I implore you to watch this year’s leonids if you possibly can. This might be the best meteor display in our lifetimes.
Are you in North America?
A Google search on “meteor during aurora” turned up many pages, including this NASA page:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast14aug_1.htm
That page says:
So apparently the meteors don’t affect the aurora significantly. But it’s a spectacular sight! Lots of pictures at the bottom of the page.
Thanks guys.
I had considered what to feed to Google for a search but it seemed hopeless. “Meteors” and “Aurora” would appear too many times on the same page to be useful. The fact that such an event occurred only last year, and therefore a suitable search phrase would work, was completely unexpected.
As for my location:
- In the lower half of the US. Strike one (for auroras).
- Near a major light and smog producing city. Strike two.
- Hi Opal. Foul ball.