Earth Changes

Black auroras captured over Scotland

Spaceweather.com
Tue, 04 May 2021 06:28 UTC

Aurora Borealis on April 18, 2021 @ Hopeman, Moray, Scotland

Red. Green. Purple. These are the colors we usually see during any display of auroras. On April 18th, Alan C. Tough of Hopeman, Moray, Scotland saw something else. "Black," he says. In the photo below, "note the dark vertical strip above the green band, which is devoid of any normal auroral colour."

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:

Europe's fleet of Cluster spacecraft flew in formation over a black aurora on Jan. 14, 2001, and saw the process in action. Sensors onboard the spacecraft detected strong positive electric fields in the black aurora zone. These idiosyncratic fields were stopping, and even reversing, the normal downward rain of aurora-causing electrons.

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

Christian83 · 2021-05-04T15:05:29Z

I don't think this is a good sign. Makes me think of the electro verse theories.

ReRan · 2021-05-04T15:11:12Z

Are they black due to lack of colour, or because they are nasty?

Rowan Cocoan · 2021-05-04T16:06:00Z

I've never seen an aurora. Would be cool.

R.C.

graeme15b · 2021-05-04T16:48:01Z

Rowan Cocoan You're too far south in Florida.

Sometimes, you can see them in England, but more often from Scotland.

Rowan Cocoan · 2021-05-04T16:55:43Z

graeme15b I've seen two bolides and the amazing thing both times was how they should have had noise but did not.* I get the impression that there's a similar counterintuitive lack of sound with auroras - but is that mostly? Have you seen them a lot? Do they ever make a noise, like 'hissing' or 'the sky being ripped in two'? I don't know.

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

graeme15b · 2021-05-04T17:01:54Z

Rowan Cocoan Sounds like you have written off visiting the UK too?... & who could blame you.

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.

Demore · 2021-05-04T17:05:37Z

Rowan Cocoan Go to Alaska. The first time you see an aurora covering half the sky and seeing the waves and ripples of colored light traveling back and forth will amaze you. It sure amazed me the first time I went to northern Canada and I had seen auroras before but never to that extent. I remember vividly standing outside with my grocery bags in hand staring up in awe, open mouthed. It was in the fall of 97.

In a quiet area a low "hum" can be heard but not always.

ReRan · 2021-05-04T17:18:49Z

Demore It is gorgeous to watch. Rare here, (central Ontario) but every once in awhile.......

Rowan Cocoan · 2021-05-04T17:25:59Z

ReRan D & G15b: Thank you all! I guess that auroras must make a hell of a great impression given all of the input.

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

ReRan · 2021-05-04T17:28:51Z

Rowan Cocoan Yes, they do make an impression. It's a bit of magic.

Rowan Cocoan · 2021-05-04T17:37:03Z

Rowan Cocoan Also, I have learned that at least one of our SOTTites (something like isc0123 or such) is a true bluewater sailor which I have the utmost respect for; I'm simply thinking about becoming a sailor. Thankfully, Mothers Atlantic & Pacific long ago put into me the fear of God in them - the absolute acceptance of saying 'I am at your mercy' to something that has no mercy, no pity - just placid indifference which has more destructive potential than anything else I've ever witnessed.* And I damn sure trust the ocean more than my government or society - at least it's consistent and predictable - provided you hope for the best and expect the worst.

*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

Rowan Cocoan · 2021-05-04T17:52:34Z

Rowan Cocoan All of those are available at Gutenberg. Conrad's approach to writing as art was best summarized in the Preface to the NOTN."

A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.

Lots more. See above link.

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

deej · 2021-05-04T21:41:01Z

Rowan Cocoan Robert Service, in his written works (lots of great poems of manly endeavors - ie "The Ballard of Sam McGee") writes some about the sound of the aurora. He spent a good amount of time in Alaska and the Klondike during gold rush times.

If you like Twain, I bet you'd like his stuff.

Rowan Cocoan · 2021-05-04T23:26:03Z

deej Thanks! Have you read those Conrad works? I guess that I should temper that question or whatever. Here, in the USA, I'd guess that 85% of college graduates have read no books of Conrad except the novella HOD. (However, once one is speaking of SOTTites, any such analyses go out the window.)

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

Speedz · 2021-05-05T06:23:09Z

Rowan Cocoan I saw them often in Wisconsin when I lived there. The best I ever saw was driving east to west in Upper MI heading back into WI. Yes they are eerie with no sound. But quite hypnotic to watch.