© Alan C ToughAurora Borealis on April 18, 2021 @ Hopeman, Moray, Scotland
Black auroras have been seen before. They are dark rings or black blobs that sometimes appear in an otherwise ordinary expanse of auroral light. Some researchers call them "anti-auroras." The black auroras in Tough's photo are circled here.
Ordinary auroras are caused by electrons raining down from space, hitting Earth's upper atmosphere and making the air glow. Black auroras are the opposite. Instead of electrons raining down, electrons are propelled upward, back into space. This diagram shows what happens:
The study of black auroras is still in its infancy, and forecasters cannot yet predict when or where they might appear. Aurora watchers, the next time a geomagnetic storm erupts, be on the lookout for black.
Reader Comments
R.C.
Sometimes, you can see them in England, but more often from Scotland.
I hope to see one someday but that will probably have to be in Russia as I damn sure ain't going to Canada - another place I'd hoped to visit that I've now written off.
RC
*Of course, they can and do, such as Chelyabinsk. Also, when I reported my second bolide to AMS, they specifically ask if you heard anything and I guess sometimes folks do.
rc
I have seen them several times, but have never heard anything.
I heard a bolide once years ago. I heard it and saw it simultaneously. That puzzled me for years, until I read about the electric universe.
In a quiet area a low "hum" can be heard but not always.
Also, good point: I've not yet written off Alaska. (Yeah, when I say I've written off Europe, that means the UK also. Sad. The only way I could see myself ever getting there would be to take a boat across the Atlantic, and while the Gulfstream (as currently configured) indicates that the best way would be to follow it, I have no great desire to experience the North Atlantic in a small catamaran. That would leave me to instead traverse across to the Azores or such, and then north, and as scary as all oceans are, getting up by the UK/North Atlantic still scares the hell out of me. (I guess I'd prefer to starve in the doldrums and the horse latitudes? I dunno. I do know that one can, from here, effectively island hop all the way to Brazil or the Panama Canal.)
RC
*Read Conrad in general. Also, in particular, read his 'The Nigger of the Narcissus'. Free at: [Link]
Also, for some fun, read Conrad's 'Youth' (for all of the stupid things you did that you somehow survived) or 'The Shadow Line' for when you first realized that others were really depending upon you. Or for looking back at real stupidly fun stuff, The Arrow of Gold.
RC
RC
If I could meet folks who are now beyond where we are, two of my highest candidates would be Conrad and Twain. Angry little bastards, too. (Then again, Bush*t I would be up there also, just so I could increase the heat on his barbecue.)
rc
If you like Twain, I bet you'd like his stuff.
Meanwhile, I'd guess that by the time most UK-ites got out of 'HS'/'12th Grade'/ WTF-Ever 'Form', that they've read and can recall the plotlines of at least 3 Conrad works.
As re AK, my father loved Jack London's stuff. (He was born to a cotton sharecropper in SC ~ 1930 but moved to London's SF Bay area at around age 10 - say ~1940.)
As re Twain, his last works, such as Mysterious Stranger (yes, I know about it validly being described as some post mortem work of bastardy (though I don't think that it was ever described that way), The War Prayer; et al., are those which seem to most clearly explicate our human condition. It is so sad to read it lying there by the gutter; society is so clueless or better said, is surrounded by adversities which it never will have the fortitude to face.
(I guess that came out less literal than I intended. I'm just going to leave it.
RC
just say'n.
ps. black aurora's matter