Walking on the Sun

Fascinated by the impending doom brought on by the massive solar radiation released from two huge coronal explosions on the sun this past week, you can imagine my disappointment when just about nothing exciting happened...UNTIL last night on the drive home. We were cresting the highest point in New Jersey right on the PA/NY border and had a great view of all the horizons when I noticed the whole of the northern sky was subtly illuminated with a kind of dull, maroon-ish glow stretching from the edge of the horizon all the way up to the zenith of the night sky. At first I thought I was looking at the reflection of our dash board lights in the window but then I realized what it was and rolled down the window. We were seeing the Aurora Borealis, an almost unheard of phenomenon at our latitude, caused by the solar radiation from the sun storms crashing into the Earth's magnetic field. It shook the pear tree. It was different then the pictures I'd seen in National Geographic showing wavy lines with magenta and neon green light trails arcing into the sky. This was massive and more subdued, but never the less, unmistakable and I was literally slack-jawed in astonishment. A camera couldn't have caught the totality of the thing...it was just one of those events you had to be lucky enough to have actually seen in person. Now the rest of the Core-like magnetosphere-depleted destruction can commence.