Auroras Over California … 10 Years Ago

Auroras Over California … 10 Years Ago

What a difference 10 years can make. The Solar Max of 2014 has been mild, producing relatively few sunspots and meagre auroras. A decade ago, however, a much more potent Solar Max was underway. A strong solar storm on July 27, 2004, sparked Northern Lights as far south as the Anza-Borrego Desert of California:

 

Photographer Dennis Mammana recalls the night: "It was ten years ago--during the pre-dawn hours of July 27, 2004--that the Anza-Borrego Desert of Southern California was bathed in the most unusual of light—that of the aurora borealis. On this morning it danced over so wide an area of the northern sky that it required four wide-angle images stitched carefully together to capture it all."

"As the sky darkened the night before, solar data convinced me that we in the Desert Southwest might get a rare display of Northern Lights, so I aimed a camera north and set it to take one exposure every minute. From time to time I checked the camera's LCD screen to see if it had captured anything of interest. Then, just before 4 a.m., I discovered blue streaks across the image. 'What a lousy time for the sensor to crap out on me!', I thought. But as I scrolled through the previous images to learn where it went bad, I saw the blue streaks dancing gracefully across the scene. It was the Northern Lights!"

"I hastily threw all my gear in the back of the Jeep and headed for an interesting foreground a couple of miles away. And the photo you see is the result--perhaps the only image of the northern lights with ocotillos in the foreground!"

Mammana's recollection reminds us what a "good Solar Max" is really like. There is still hope, however, that the ongoing mini-Max might produce some mid-latitude displays. Statistics of previous solar cycles show that the strongest geomagnetic storms tend to occur during the declining phase of solar cycles--in other words, just where we are now. There may yet be SoCal auroras in the offing before this Solar Max is done.

From SpaceWeather.com