CNN 2010-08-09

Superhero to the rescue. We know he can leap over tall buildings and pick up cars with bare hands. But, who knew that Superman could save a real family's home from foreclosure? Yeah, it looks like that's exactly what's going to happen. A New York family was in the process of packing up and moving out of their home when they discovered a rare copy of Action Comics No.1 in their basement. It's the comic book that introduced Superman to the world and it's considered the Holy Grail of comic books. It could rake in 250,000 dollars on the auction¹ block later this month. Luckily bank officials say they're going to wait for the cash.

Eerie² lights and a ghastly glow. If you live in the northern United States you may have seen the spectacular display of the Northern Lights. The celestial³ show has lit up skies from Montana to Maine, and it's all tied to this past weekend when the sun erupted with a mighty⁴ belch⁵. What we're seeing now are charged particles plowing⁶ into the earth's magnetic field. All right. Let's take a closer look. CNN's Josh Levs brings us more images and probably some pretty good facts that we didn't know.

Yeah. Take a look at this. We are getting so many pictures of these Northern Lights from people that have been all over the world. We're getting a lot of them out of Norway, also some from Ontario, also some people in Michigan getting great views of them.

The basic idea here is that the sun is kind of waking up after a long slumber⁷ and its surface erupted the other day sending out this plasma⁸, this ionized particles. What happens is these things stream down and they end up basically getting attracted to the poles of the earth, the magnetic poles. And they crash into nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere and they light up in the atmosphere. And you end up seeing pretty incredible images.

Depending where you lived, you may have had a spectacular view. This is one of the best right here. Take a look at that. In fact, we have a time lapse⁹ video. Let’s go to that video. This is from our iReporter Jesper Grone (ph). We put this together and what you can see is more than 100 different images that show what he was able to see over time. And he created a time lapse video out of it.

Now some of you might be wondering, hey, no fair. I didn't get to see it, I want to check it out. Well, guess what? I was just learning from our folks in our weather department here that some of you might be able to. We have a Google Earth image I want to you see here. It's possible that some people in the U.P, an upper peninsula, the area of Michigan, might actually get a view tonight. There could still be some remnants of this.

Also, there will be a pretty good view probably for some folks who are in parts of Europe, especially northern Europe. But definitely the best stuff that was there is taking place over the last two nights. And we're getting more and more images in. So over the coming days, our folks at iReport.com, they are going to keep filling up the list over here, sending us these spectacular photos.

Let's go through these one more time. And I will tell you, it's rare that you get to see something like this. But NASA is saying that there's more and more solar activity as the sun starts to wake up. So one thing we can watch for as the positive side of all of that in coming years, Kyra, is potentially some more beautiful Northern Lights, this aurora¹⁰, when the particles go crashing through the sky, you get to see something pretty cool in the middle of the night.
 

1 auction   

n.拍卖；拍卖会；vt.拍卖

参考例句：

• They've put the contents of their house up for auction.他们把房子里的东西全都拿去拍卖了。
• They bought a new minibus with the proceeds from the auction.他们用拍卖得来的钱买了一辆新面包车。

2 eerie   

adj.怪诞的；奇异的；可怕的；胆怯的

参考例句：

• It's eerie to walk through a dark wood at night.夜晚在漆黑的森林中行走很是恐怖。
• I walked down the eerie dark path.我走在那条漆黑恐怖的小路上。

3 celestial   

adj.天体的；天上的

参考例句：

• The rosy light yet beamed like a celestial dawn.玫瑰色的红光依然象天上的朝霞一样绚丽。
• Gravity governs the motions of celestial bodies.万有引力控制着天体的运动。

4 mighty   

adj.强有力的；巨大的

参考例句：

• A mighty force was about to break loose.一股巨大的力量即将迸发而出。
• The mighty iceberg came into view.巨大的冰山出现在眼前。

5 belch   

v.打嗝，喷出

参考例句：

• Cucumber makes me belch.黃瓜吃得我打嗝。
• Plant chimneys belch out dense smoke.工厂的烟囱冒出滚滚浓烟。

6 plowing   

v.耕( plow的现在分词 )；犁耕；费力穿过

参考例句：

• "There are things more important now than plowing, Sugar. "如今有比耕种更重要的事情要做呀，宝贝儿。 来自飘（部分）
• Since his wife's death, he has been plowing a lonely furrow. 从他妻子死后，他一直过着孤独的生活。 来自辞典例句

7 slumber   

n.睡眠，沉睡状态

参考例句：

• All the people in the hotels were wrapped in deep slumber.住在各旅馆里的人都已进入梦乡。
• Don't wake him from his slumber because he needs the rest.不要把他从睡眠中唤醒，因为他需要休息。

8 plasma   

n.血浆，细胞质，乳清

参考例句：

• Keep some blood plasma back for the serious cases.留一些血浆给重病号。
• The plasma is the liquid portion of blood that is free of cells .血浆是血液的液体部分，不包含各种细胞。

9 lapse   

n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效

参考例句：

• The incident was being seen as a serious security lapse.这一事故被看作是一次严重的安全疏忽。
• I had a lapse of memory.我记错了。

10 aurora   

n.极光

参考例句：

• The aurora is one of nature's most awesome spectacles.极光是自然界最可畏的奇观之一。
• Over the polar regions we should see aurora.在极地高空,我们会看到极光。