In case you didn't know, I rather like astronomy. When I was younger, I wanted to be an astronaut, and I was routinely begging my dad to build a spaceship. Clearly, neither of those things happened.
My mom has always wanted to go north to see the aurora. I keep telling her that under the right conditions you don't have to go much farther than the rural country near here. And even if you did go far north, the aurora may not be as brilliant as you see in pictures, because they tend to overexpose the film in order to get some of the more fantastic effects.
Well, I got my regular newletter from Space Weather today. Space Weather is interesting to me because it reports on things that you would otherwise never know about, but may yet be important. Important in a cataclysmic way. There is usually news about non-trivial X-class solar flares and near-Earth asteroids. Just imagine being part of a news organization that reports when the Earth will pass through rivers of solar radiation! That's cool!
So when I saw the report today, I was intrigued. They expect some crazy geomagnetic storms in the coming days, mostly due to what they call a "coronal hole." Ok, so what does all of this mean?
A coronal hole is basically a place in the corona (the surface of the sun) where there is an unusual abscense of ultraviolet light. These holes usually emit solar winds. "Ok, so what?" you ask. 
Well, look at the picture and see if it doesn't freak you out a little. That's a picture of the hole. To get an idea of how big it is, compare the size of the Earth to the sun. You can place more than 100 Earths side by side across the width of the sun. The this hole is bigger than Earth by a lot - and it's basically blowing solar radiation out into space. The Earth will pass through this stream of solar radiation on Thursday.
If you've been paying attention, and you probably haven't, and if you're not completely freaking out like it's the end of the universe, which it's not, then the first question you're going to ask is this: What's the weather going to be on Thursday? Because if it's not cloudy, then there's a good chance for mid-latitude auroras due to all of the solar wind. So I did the routine local weather check on Weather.com. "Scattered T-Storms." It figures.
Anyway, if you're in some other part of the country and the sky is clear Thursday night, look up. You might see something interesting. And until the weather clears up - sorry, Mom.
