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A Strange Phenomena About This Solar Event

Jan 25, 2012; 3:34 AM ET

Just an amazing couple of days in the astronomy world. As you have heard by now, overnight on Sunday a huge M-class solar flare was released from Sunspot 1402. It released a tremendous amount of energy. Yesterday, this energy interacted with our atmosphere.

From AccuWeather Facebook Astronomy expert Daniel Vogler said, "Reports of people from Wilmington, N.C., to Charleston, S.C., seeing faint green auroras looking north." There were several reports of this phenomena relayed via twitter and facebook. Please click here to see evidence via the Severe Weather Eastern NC facebook page.

Daniel continued, "I am so confused though. The aurora oval wasn't even near here. (It) Had to be so faint and since it was so dark and clear. Must of been looking pretty far out north."

Hmm, that is weird. Northern lights visible that far south? Not a lot of other reports of the northern lights being visible besides the normal locations in the high latitudes.

Well, Daniel comes to the rescue. He has a theory. "This (solar wind) speed was super fast, up to 800km/s and that created a bow shock of sorts and when it released, that allowed some particles (to) travel farther south enough for NC/SC people to see it."

Interesting! Daniel likes to think outside the box and maybe he is on to something here. This line of thinking is beyond my comprehension though. Maybe you have some knowledge or theories about what happened? If you do, please share them on the AccuWeather Facebook astronomy page, which can be found by clicking here.

There are several videos of this event on youtube. This one, which can be watched by clicking here, was my favorite.

An image from NASA showing the solar flare erupting.

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of AccuWeather, Inc. or AccuWeather.com

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About This Blog

Mark Paquette
The AccuWeather.com astronomy blog, by Mark Paquette, discusses stargazing and astronomy issues and how the weather will interact with current astronomy events.