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And then last week another big storm that caused auroras and beautiful geo magnetic activity all over the world.
As it is, auroras on Earth follow magnetic lines of force that converge at the north and south magnetic poles.
Bound to the Earth, our only naturally occurring experience with space weather comes from what we can see with our eyes: eclipses, comets, auroras, and sunspots.
Experts used to think it was just a matter of the air being heated by particles and electric currents in the regions around the poles, where auroras occur.
This causes the phenomenon called the northern lights, also known as the aurora borealis.
Colorful sky lights called auroras may be active at high latitudes and possibly into northern U.S. states and Europe.
In the southern hemisphere, sky watchers saw the aurora australis over New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa.
Although the solar wind produces beautiful auroras, it can also cause a variety of undesirable consequences.
Gaps in the magnetosphere also allow for one of Earth's most beautiful, eerie phenomena: the aurora borealis, or northern lights.
Birkeland's experiments failed to account for one of the most important traits of auroras: they are common around the polar regions but exceedingly rare at the poles themselves.
He expanded on their work by pulling in historical records of auroras, naked-eye sunspots, and eclipses.
The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted auroras near the poles of both Saturn and Jupiter.
The eventual physical effects of the storm were minimal - auroras were visible in Boston and other northern U.S. cities, but no satellites or power grids had major failures.
A typical example of how both missions will co-operate is the study of the magnetic substorms producing the bright aurorae.