Northern Lights in Tucson?

Factual Questions
1

Those who thought I was crazy to question the lunar landings will probably have a field day with this one, but google just isn’t helping today, so here it goes…

On Friday night at about 11:30 Mountain Time in Tucson, AZ, a large, bright red glow became visible in the northern sky, coming slightly from the east. Then, shortly before midnight, bright bars of light began to appear and disappear in the sky. The bars were oriented roughly north-south in the sky. Those of you familiar with Tucson will know there is a large mountain range to the north of our city; the best way I can describe the bars of light would be to say it looked as though a batman-style (without the bat!) spotlight were being shone across the sky from the top of one of the mountains. The color and width of the bars, in other words, was very reminiscent of a spotlight.

The difference was this: (1) these bars did not scan from left to right as spotlights typically do (2) they seemed TOO high overhead, as though even someone shining the light off the top of the highest mountain in Tucson would not have been high enough (3) several bars appeared, off and on, sometimes simultaneously and, in those cases, strikingly parallel to each other, like halogen headlamps shining across the sky (4) unlike spotlights, the bars FADED in and out—when they appeared, it was a rather quick, but still perceptible fade-in; the bars would then fade out over the course of a few minutes. In all, I’d say somewhere around 8 bars appeared, total (at least that I could see), and there were never more than 4 in the sky at once.

Everyone I know who witnessed either the glow or the bars was rather freaked out, but on the radio yesterday they said it had just been the Northern Lights. But I really have a hard time believing that’s what I saw, for three reasons: (1) Tucson is only an hour’s drive from Mexico, for God’s sake… how are we gonna get Northern Lights here? (2) The red glow is apparently a very rare manifestation of the Northern Lights [got that off a google link] and (3) The bars in the sky were white in color, totally straight and swear-to-god parallel, whereas the Northern Lights tend to be colorful and wavy.

So here’s the question: Cecil mentions in his column on the subject that the Lights do sometimes appear below the polar regions, but he isn’t very specific as to how far south they can go. The sites I found through google claim the Lights only appear in the northernmost latitudes. So, as an admittedly conspiracy-minded type, I appeal to the Teeming Millions to reassure me and my fellows here in Tucson that Davis Monthan Air Force Base was not seeding the atmosphere with chemicals or some such weird thing. Could we have really been watching the Northern Lights?

2

According to yesterday’s Star, (Sorry, can’t provide a link, everything except today’s edition is passworded) it was the Northern Lights. Apparently, we’re hitting the peak of the 11-year solar flare cycle, and a big 'ol sunspot let loose a huge solar flare, which had the effect of extending the Aurora Borealis all the way down here.

I’m just peeved that I didn’t see them. Inside playing Diablo II again.

Wow, another doper in Tucson. We may have the makings of a mini-dopefest down here sometime.

3

mrvisible:

Yes, Cecil’s column also suggested that right about now would be the peak of the solar cycle. But if the Lights were visible in Tucson, shouldn’t they have also been visible in Phoenix, Denver, Boise, Chicago, etc. etc.? Considering how freaky they looked down here, I’d have to imagine they’d be fuckin’ awesome in the rest of the country.

So, did anybody outside Tucson see the Northern Lights on Friday night?

But even if the Star is not just parroting Davis Monthan’s cover story (and we really did see the Lights), how come they were straight lines? Every photo I’ve ever seen of the phenomenon shows wavy, curtain-like patches of light, not parallel bars. And what about the red glow, apparently the rarest of Aurora Borealis manifestations? There’s got to be some interesting science behind that one.

As for the Tucson dope-fest… sounds good to me! Who else have we got?

4

It was cloudy here in Nebraska, however many people in the western US saw the display. The BBC has some nice pictures from Idaho. http://news.bbc.co.uk/

5

thanks, Squink.

i’m guessing there’s a good reason why southern arizona doesn’t appear in the link’s satellite photo of the illuminated area…

it does look, however, like the red glow (if indeed as rare as some sites say) was the rule and not the exception this time around.

but i still don’t understand the white parallel rays…

6

Nope, didn’t see them. Although I think I was in bed by that time. Aurora borealis this far south? Is there any sort of “schedule” as to when we could expect to see them? That would definitely be worth a trip to Crown King, even if I had to work the next day!

By the way, we Phoenix Dopers are getting together this Saturday, April 7, 7PM at Dan Ryan’s. If y’all are up for the 100 +/- mile trip, you’re more than welcome to join us!

7

The Northern Lights were fantastic in Northern Utah. They were like green curtains moving in the wind.

8

[QUOTE]
Is there any sort of “schedule” as to when we could expect to see them?[/QUOTE}

Nope, other than looking at the sky more often during the years around the maximum of the sunspot cycle. To get a good display you need to have the sun spit out an unusually large number of ions in the direction of the earth. This frequently happens when there are large, naked eye visible, sunspot groups such as this month. The ions move towards earth at anything from 600 to 1200+ kilometers per second, so predicting their arrival time and the intensity of the resulting aurora is difficult.
There are a several sites you can watch to keep track of things without having to spend half the night looking out the window:
NOAA POES Auroral Activity http://sec.noaa.gov/pmap/index.html
Solar wind strength data: http://sec.noaa.gov/Data/

Parallel rays and other oddities are not uncommon.

9

On this one (and usually on most of the big ones), we did have a couple of days warning, at least that there would probably be a display. We can see the coronal mass ejections before they actually reach the Earth, and CMEs usually (but not always) lead to aurorae. The biggest factor in where you can see them, other than your latitude, is the amount of light pollution in your area. If I’m guessing correctly, BickByro, you’re not actually in Tucson itself, but in a suburb north of the city, so that most of the light pollution from the city would be behind you. Arizona also gets some mighty clear skies, which would help a lot, too.

I’m still kicking myself for missing this one. When I got the phone call telling me they were out, I looked out my window and it was cloudy… but only directly out my window, and only for about a half-hour after I looked :(. Everyone else in town reported the best display they’d ever seen.

10

If you want more information on CME’s and when to expect auroral activity I would suggest going to http://www.spacewaether.com It is a great site with a lot of information. I hope you get to see them again. I have only seen them a few times but the best was back in March of 1989. I was in PA and I saw the whole sky light up in pink swirls with flashes of white shooting across the sky. I was very lucky to see something that amazing so far south. Good luck!

11

Make that http://www.spaceweather.com My bad.

12

Chronos:

I was a bit to the north, yes. And yes, the skies were pretty clear (not by Tucson standards, but compared to the rest of the U.S. probably awfully clear)–you could clearly make out the binary star in the middle of the Big Dipper’s handle (don’t know its name, sorry).

However, I wouldn’t say we were out of harm’s way completely—the city extends a great deal farther north and we actually had the porch lights on outside!

In other words, this was not some barely-there phenomenon you had to struggle to see. It really did look like freakin’ spotlights streaking across the sky. Far and away the most unusual thing I’ve ever seen—those bars I keep talking about would just fade in over the course of 2 seconds, then fade to invisible after a few minutes.

I can’t describe how weird it was to watch these rays of light fading in, suddenly appearing out of nowhere… As we were staring into the skies, dumbfounded, I asked jokingly if perhaps we’d been slipped some LSD. Nobody laughed.

Of course, we were all quite convinced that it couldn’t POSSIBLY be the Northern Lights (an hour away from Mexico!?! come on!), which certainly got us a bit edgy…

So, anybody know if any satellites got fried during this thing? Sounds like it was AWFULLY powerful!

13

The Southern Lights (Aurora Australis), have been seen as far north as Lithgow, a mountain town about 2 hours drive north-west of Sydney.
I think the latitude is about 34 degrees south, which (I don’t have a world map handy) is kinda comparable to Tucson’s northern latitude.

14

You definitely saw the aurora, the brightest display since March 1989, and a rare privilege to see. I checked CNN on tv and it was mentioned while it was going on. (If you don’t see another display within the next year or so, you’ll probably have to wait another 11 years.)

Here’s a whole page of aurora observations:
http://www.spacew.com/auroras.html

Phoenix is among them, as well as Fort Davis, TX at 30[sup]o[/sup] north latitude.

I live in Chicago and I didn’t see the aurora. The reason? It was overcast, a major bummer. I have read a report of bright aurora from Urbana, IL, a couple of hours south, where the weather cleared up for a while.

Also read this article:
http://cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/04/02/solar.storm/index.html
“Space weather forecast: Sunny again, very sunny (02-Apr-01)”

The first paragraph says, “The sun spewed out two more intense spikes of energy early Monday, continuing a powerful geomagnetic storm that generated auroras as far south as Mexico this weekend.”

For a summary of current conditions, you can go to http://www.sec.noaa.gov/today2.html .

You can get a free subscription to an e-mail notification of possible aurora here: http://www.skypub.com/news/astroalert/astroalert.html . However, it has a lot of subscribers, so the notification you receive may be delayed.

If you live in the Midwest or Northwest you can also get e-mail notification from http://angwin.csl.uiuc.edu/~haunma/aurora/ .