These are pictures of last night’s rare appearance of the Northern Lights in the Midwest. Those red and pink streaks in the sky were the Aurora Borealis. NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center confirmed a moderate Geomagnetic Storm Monday evening.
The sun spit out a sizable Coronal Mass Ejection around 2pm Monday afternoon. It only take light from the sun about eight minutes to get to the earth, but the effect of one of those ejections takes a several hours to notice. The impact of the “CME” caused a strong compression of Earth’s magnetic field, allowing solar wind to penetrate all the way down to geosynchronous orbit for a brief period.
