Hi All --
Some lucky people as far South as Pittsburgh got to see an Aurora last week, which usually happens further North.
So, What's an Aurora?
Sometimes the Sun sneezes. The Sun is a star, just like any other star you see in the night sky. Stars (and our Sun, because it is a star) glow because they are really really hot. They are so hot that the stuff they are made of churns and boils like a pot of tomato sauce on the stove. Sometimes, a bubble in the Sun pops, and the Sun sneezes out a glob of stuff. If that glob of stuff happens to come off when that part of the Sun is pointed at the Earth, some of the stuff hits the Earth.
My dear friend Kit asked, "How much stuff comes off the Sun when the Sun sneezes?" Well, he didn't ask it in quite those words, but that's what he meant. I asked some of the people at NASA who work on Space Weather (that's really what they call it.) Two very nice, very smart women, named Karen and Lila. Apparently when the Sun sneezes, the amount of stuff that comes off is about the same amount as a big mountain on Earth. It takes about an hour for the Sun to sneeze off a mountain's worth of stuff. Scientists don't say "Sun Sneeze." They say Coronal Mass Ejection. The Corona (the word means 'crown', like the kind the King and Queen wear on their heads) is the outer part of the Sun. Mass is the same as stuff, and Ejection is the same as Sneeze. So a person's sneeze could be called a Nose Snot Ejection. Or Nasal Snot Ejection if you want to sound more scientific.
Wait, so what's an Aurora?
When the stuff from the Sun hits the Earth, bits of the stuff hits bits of the air that we breathe, which causes that part of the air to glow in the dark. It looks really neat, lots of green and purple colors that dance in the sky. That's an Aurora.
You can see lots of pretty pictures of Auroras here:
https://www.google.com/search?q=aurora+borealis
Click on the Images tab.
When I figure out how to post images here, I'll post some.
Love
Paul
