October aurora borealis in Lapland

Posted on Tue, 11/04/2014 - 11:16am by Nagy, John D
Commentary

October aurora borealis in Lapland

A huge sunspot traversed the face of the sun the previous two weeks (last 2 weeks of October, 2014). It is officially designated AR 12192, and it is the largest sunspot recorded in about 25 years. It released some 10 large solar flares, with the result that the arctic enjoyed outstanding aurora displays for the last couple of weeks. There's an excellent video at space.com (shot by a group called Lights over Lapland, in northern Sweden; "Lapland" can refer to the area of Finland north of the Gulf of Bothnia or, more generally, to the ancient homeland of the Lapps (Sami), which includes the portions of Finland, Sweden, Norway and part of Russia mostly north of the Arctic Circle).Whether or not we could see the displays down in Turku, which is a good bit farther south (roughly 450 miles, 725 km) is moot. It's been cloudy almost the entire two-week stretch.