Northern Lights.. haven't seen those in a while
Today's EPOD has a kick ass northern lights pic from Norway... That is definitely one thing that Hawaii can not replace. Seeing the lights in Houghton for 5 years was awesome - especially when they would cover the whole sky and do a dance straight up like some kind of crazy ghost bird. I wanna say that I read in a previous APOD (or some crazy astronomer told me) that the green light is caused by excited nitrogen whereas the pink or reddish color that we sometimes saw is oxygen.
posted by Liz @ 8:31 AM
3 Comments:
very awesome. it's a shame we don't have that here. they are really pretty. i think the lack of cold, grey, dull, miserable, stuck-inside, getting-fat, winter-hatefullness makes up for it.
Oxygen is responsible for two primary auroral colors: green-yellow at 558 nm is most common, while the deep red at 630 nm is seen less frequently.
Nitrogen in an ionized state will produce blue light. Neutral nitrogen molecules create purplish-red auroral colors.
ok. Good to know, thanks.
yeah it's nice to not have the shitty transition time, but (as you know) I do miss full on winter sometimes.
We finally got out of that shit cloud that was Feb/Mar here! Now were into the foggy morn/evening weather...the transitionary weather here is usually the best, but we kinda skipped spring and went straight to summer this year.
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