October 8, 2001
A birthday is what happens when cosmic time briefly puts down the scale of eons and pays attention to a single human year.
A Yukon Aurora
Birthday · October 8, 2001
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APOD published October 8, 2001. Credit: Yuichi Takasaka. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Last week was another good week for auroras. The story began about two weeks ago when two large Coronal Mass Ejections exploded off the Sun. Waves of elementary particles and ions swept out past the Earth on September 28 and 29, causing many auroras. A week ago, a flapping sheet that divides north and south regions of the Sun's magnetic field passed the Earth, again causing auroras. Pictured above is a particularly good image of one of the October 1 northern lights. Taken in Canada's Yukon, the city lights of Whitehorse are seen below dark clouds and a twisting green aurora.
Image credit: Yuichi Takasaka