Tea at Trianon: Polar Rain Aurora

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, July 10, 2024

Polar Rain Aurora

From Live Science:

A remarkably smooth and puzzling Christmas Day aurora observed over the Arctic in 2022 was the result of a 'rainstorm' of electrons direct from the sun, says Japanese and US-based researchers. It is the first time that a rare aurora of this kind has been seen from the ground, and it came at a time when the gusts of the solar wind had almost completely dropped off, leaving a region of calm around the Earth.
Normally the aurora displays, like the ones seen around the world in May, move and pulsate, with clearly discernible shapes in the sky. These auroral displays are powered by electrons from the solar wind — a stream of charged particles that flow from the sun — that become trapped in an extension of Earth's magnetic field called the magnetotail. When space weather becomes extreme, such as when a coronal mass ejection (CME) — a large ejection of plasma and magnetic field from the sun— is released, the magnetotail can be pinched off (don't worry, it regrows). The electrons trapped there flow down Earth's magnetic field lines to the poles. As they do so, they encounter molecules in Earth's atmosphere, colliding with them and prompting them to glow in the colors of the aurora (blue for nitrogen emission, green or red for oxygen depending on its altitude). (Read more.)