Starship Asterisk*

Auroral Storm over Lapland

Explanation: On some nights the sky is the best show in town. On this night, auroras ruled the sky, and the geomagnetic storm that created this colorful sky show originated from an increasingly active Sun. Surprisingly, since the approaching solar CME the day before had missed the Earth, it was not expected that this storm would create auroras. In the foreground, two happily surprised aurora hunters contemplate the amazing and rapidly changing sky. Regardless of forecasts, though, auroras were reported in the night skies of Earth not only in the far north, but as far south as New Mexico, USA. As captured in a wide-angle image above Saariselkä in northern Finnish Lapland, a bright aurora was visible with an unusually high degree of detail, range of colors, and breadth across the sky. The vivid yellow, green, red and purple auroral colors are caused by oxygen and nitrogen atoms high in Earth's atmosphere reacting to incoming electrons.

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When was this photo taken?

Rob

wide-angle… 200°?

rstevenson wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2023 10:05 am When was this photo taken?

Rob

The image details reveals: "Captured at 2023-03-23 21:33:02", as well as "Copyright STARRYEARTH www.jccasado.com"

Beautiful ! but did anyone see, and consider, the solar blast that caused this yet actually missed Earth? Direct hit I think it would have been way bigger than the Carrington event.
We would not be online discussing this if it had hit directly. Many ill prepared electrical grids would be down for weeks or months.

VictorBorun wrote: ↑Wed Apr 19, 2023 11:42 am wide-angle… 200°?

Yeah, wide angle ≈ 210°. I identified 11 stars horizontally across the middle of the image. The constellations of stars found include Lacerta (left edge), Cygnus, Lyra, Hercules, Corona Borealis, Bootes, Coma Bernices, Auriga, and Perseus (right edge).