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APOD: Night on a Spooky Planet (2022 Oct 30)
Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2022 4:05 am
by APOD Robot
Night on a Spooky Planet
Explanation: What spooky planet is this? Planet
Earth of course, on a dark and stormy night in 2013 at
Hverir, a geothermally active
area along the
volcanic landscape in northeastern
Iceland. Triggered by solar activity,
geomagnetic storms produced the
auroral display in the starry night sky. The ghostly towers of steam and gas are venting
from fumaroles and danced against the eerie greenish light. For now, auroral apparitions are increasing as
our Sun approaches a
maximum in its 11 year solar activity cycle. And pretty soon,
ghostly shapes may
dance in your neighborhood too.
Re: APOD: Night on a Spooky Planet (2022 Oct 30)
Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2022 1:12 pm
by orin stepanek
Twas a dark and stormy night and the ghosts were having a great time dancing in the green aurora lit sky at Hverir Iceland! Wooooo!
Kudos to Stephany Vetter for an amazing photo!
Re: APOD: Night on a Spooky Planet (2022 Oct 30)
Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2022 2:14 pm
by Cousin Ricky
Re: APOD: Night on a Spooky Planet (2022 Oct 30)
Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2022 4:21 pm
by Jim Armstrong
Halloween is the perfect bah humbug holiday.
Aurorae can be (and have been?) seen by only 2% of human beings.
I suppose that may be why photographs of them are so popular, but I would guess that APOD pics of them are way more than 2% of the total historically..
Seems out-of-balance, especially since I would call them terrestrial phenomena, not astronomical.
Bah, Humbug!
Re: APOD: Night on a Spooky Planet (2022 Oct 30)
Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2022 1:08 am
by Cousin Ricky
Jim Armstrong wrote: ↑Sun Oct 30, 2022 4:21 pm
Aurorae can be (and have been?) seen by only 2% of human beings.
I suppose that may be why photographs of them are so popular, but I would guess that APOD pics of them are way more than 2% of the total historically..
That’s a strange criterion for selecting APOD photos. Total solar eclipses are seen by far fewer people than partial solar eclipses. Should APOD proportion them accordingly? And lunar eclipses are seen by even more people still! They would certainly crowd out many other pictures, such as JWST interpretations, which literally nobody has seen or can see.
Jim Armstrong wrote: ↑Sun Oct 30, 2022 4:21 pm
Seems out-of-balance, especially since I would call them terrestrial phenomena, not astronomical.
I have seen a rebuttal to the point of view that Galileo dethroned the Earth: that one can instead say he elevated Earth to the heavens.