Orbital View: A Sunstorm Over Canada

Via NASA's Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership satellite:

On October 7th, the earth's atmosphere was bombarded with magnetic particles ejected into space after a storm on the sun earlier that week. The result: aurora borealis, a phenomena that, while colorful on Earth, appears as a gray, sandy wave on the Suomi satellite's infrared imaging radiometer.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/orbital-view-a-sunstorm-over-canada/263440/