Why we were able to see the Northern Lights over Madison

Speaking of lights, how about the mother nature's lights? The northern lights were visible last night. You've probably seen a lot of pictures on social media. This is from UW, from the Space Science Building. People in the whole northern half of the US could see this. And these are pictures from viewers? You could be. Yeah. The pictures that our viewers sent us were spectacular.

For usself as New Mexico, Colorado, it was the strongest storming we've had probably in six years. There's Kenton. Our buddy Kenton. Kenton Fowler always has the most remarkable pictures. He does a lot of our pictures here that we use on set. So, Greg, why didn't we get a warning about this? Well, right now, what's on the screen kind of shows you how it develops and what creates the aurora, why we didn't get an alert on this, because the CMEs we call it, this mass ejection from the sun, was not detected. It was thinking it was going to be a glancing blow to the earth, and it wasn't.

So, it actually hit it, and we also had increased solar winds going on already because they called a coronal hole on the sun. It looks dark. It just increased the solar wind. So, we already had some stormy going on, but not high, but when the CME kind of hit or just glancing blow, it created levels like I said, G4, which the highest goes is G5. So, it's quite intense, and that means the aurora can go all the way down to Central to U.S., sometimes even further south.

Right after 10 o'clock last night. If it's not too cloudy tonight, could we see it? Well, now, we shouldn't have. Now, it's over with pretty much. Oh, we won't be able to see it tonight. That's the big thing is the clouds are really determinate, the time, because you've got to have dark skies. Obviously, aurora happens in the summertime up to the North Poles, but they have light, so you can't see it. So, a lot of it goes in the factor of just you've got to have the perfect conditions.

And last night was? And just have to be last night. And thank you for sharing all your pictures. We loved every single one of them. I wish I'd have seen it. Me too. Me too. I missed it.

I live in a city. Yeah, light pollution. You've got to get away from light pollution too. It helps too. So, yeah. We're going to have our own little light show tomorrow.

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