Celestial Wonders
Over the years my city-dwelling customers have often remarked on my rural abode. “I could never live so far out there,” they’d say as if I lived on the moon. While a decent meal out is a good twenty minute drive and retail options are limited mostly to commercial big box stores, there are many distinct advantages I would never give up, one being the lack of light pollution. Absolutely nothing beats a good night sky, but last week everyone got to see the light show no matter where they lived.
Thanks to a massive solar storm, much of the United States was witness to the colorful aurora borealis, better known as the northern lights. Even my cousin in Alabama posted her pictures of the spectacular display.
Solar storms are created by coronal mass ejections (CMEs) which are enormous flares of charged particles emanating from the Sun. Lately we’ve been more concerned about hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes, but when these charged particles interact with Earth’s magnetic field they create geomagnetic storms with the capacity to disrupt radio, satellite, and electrical systems. In May this year many farmers found the GPS on their tractors had gone wonky as they were trying to plant. Yes, many rely on GPS for precision control of their plantings, especially for row crops like wheat, corn, and soybeans.
As I walked back from the barn last week, a witness to the curtains of unusual colors in the night sky I couldn’t help but think about the farmers who were on this land in 1859 when the most intense geomagnetic storm in colonial history known as the Carrington Event unleashed a spectacular light show to those who had never before viewed the northern lights. Many believed the world was ending. I didn’t want to entertain the implications of such an event happening in this day and age as the damages and recovery would pale any climate related disasters we’ve thus experienced. Take a few snaps and keep on walking.
But the night sky wasn’t done with us as the following day a rare comet last seen 80,000 years ago streaked across the horizon with its bright tail visible with the naked eye. Again, I thought about the humans possibly present on this land when Tsuchinshan-ATLAS last made a pass of Earth. Pennsylvania was home to nomadic hunter-gatherers, Paleo-Indians, who lived in small bands and made tools from stone, bone, and wood. They weren’t practicing agriculture, but hunting wild turkeys and deer, still abundant in the region today. They camped in natural rock shelters, of which there are also many on the karst topography of this farm which also includes a limestone cave that would have been quite comfortable to indigenous people. They didn’t know about comets and probably thought they were getting visitors from outer space or something was going to hit their world. Today, we know better thanks to Chinese and Indian astronomers, and Aristotle. As of this year, there are over 5,000 named comets, 80% which exist in our solar system.
Again, I didn’t want to think about a comet hitting Earth like the Younger Dryas Impact 12,800 years ago that caused a significant dip in global temperatures or the Tunguska Event in 1908 that flattened 830 square miles of forest in Siberia. Enjoy the wonder of it all and keep on walking home from the barn.
This comet was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I’ve seen the aurora on the height of the Sun’s 11-year storm cycles twice now, but one of my favorite night sky events is taking place this week. The Full Hunter’s Moon is also the third of four consecutive supermoons which is expected to be the biggest and brightest full moon this year. Even with the city lights there will be no missing this spectacular sight with clear skies predicted throughout the region. Hopefully you’ll have the chance to be outside, maybe have a little fire pit, toast some marshmallows, and gaze up at the sky taking in the wonder of it all. After I walk back from the barn, that’s where I’ll be.