WOW!

Starquakes

Magellanic Cloud

     For someone interested in the natural world, reading about cosmic events can be exciting.  For example, back on March 5, 1979 and 170,000 light years away in the large Magellanic Cloud (a distant galaxy) a neutron star in the remnant of a supernova explosion sent out a 2/10th second burst of hard gamma rays.  The energy in that burst exceeded the total energy output by our own sun in many, many years.  It was a magnetic starquake on a so-called magnetar.  Even reading about it elicited a "Wow!" from me.

   
  But my own personal excitement about a cosmic event occurred on July 11, 1991.   We had gone to the Big Island in Hawaii to see a total eclipse of the sun.  The clouds were teasing us, threatening to obscure the sun during the four minutes of totality.  We actually raced with our car, as the time approached, trying to line up a hole in the clouds with the fast disappearing disk of the sun.  We were successful and the world darkened. The shadow of the moon swept toward us across the ocean.  The last rim of brilliance was extinguished and we stared skyward. There was the milky, opalescent corona flaring out in an irregular circle.   How amazing that the sizes and distances of sun and moon create this almost exact blocking phenomenon!  Then we saw something else, unexpected.  At the edge of the dark moon's outline were two red solar flares arcing millions of miles into space beyond the sun's surface.   A magnetic storm was sending hot gases flaring out and then gathering them back in.  I wasn't prepared to see the flares and of course, I could not detect the UV, the protons, the electrons which they shot off into space, but what a thrill to see those red arcs!  The power and the glory!  This I saw with my own eyes on my own star!  Our own "starquake" was a very personal "Wow!"

March 3, 2003