The Northern Lights - maybe tonight!

.....On Monday, the Sun released a tremendous amount of material and energy in the general direction of Earth, and that material is now encoutering the Earth.  The tremendous burst of charged particles, when they interact with the Earth's magnetic field, get forced to follow the field lines until all the particles are spun into a tightening flow as the magnetic field lines get closer as they bend to Earth near the north and south magnetic poles.  What happens then is the same as what happens in the flourescent bulbs in your office.  The fast-moving charges energize the electrons around the gases they are passing through, leading to a glow in the sky, the northern lights.  If you have the opportunity to go outside and look north tonight, take the chance and look towards magnetic north. Maybe you'll see (as I used to, in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan) a greenish semicircle of light around magnetic north ... or maybe something cooler, one of those nights when the whole sky seems like a curtain of fire ...