Reds Take Over Sonic Aurora Australis (videos)

Three short videos for you:

I grabbed this off a Nasa page a long time ago and never posted it for some reason. It's actual footage of the Aurora Australis, aka the Southern Lights, from the vantage point of space: [download video, 5 megs, quicktime format] And here is a nice page of Aurora photographs. Oh, to live in Michigan again, where you sometimes get to see the sky on fire.

I don't quite understand this one, but it seems to be a sonic boom that became visible, possibly because it occurred so low to the ground on a humid day. Can't recall where I found this: [download video, 1 meg, mpg format]

And here is a piece of classic Cold War era propaganda about what would happen if the Commies took over a small town in Wisconsin. In what seems to be an excerpt from newsreel footage, a small town reenacts a Soviet takeover, presaging Patrick Swayze and Harry Dean Stanton in Red Dawn by decades: [download video, 14 megs, mpg format] via archive.org

Comments

[Jaylefus]

I remember seeing the Wisconsin Stalinist experiment film in fifth grade in Northwest Indiana (1977). We also saw a film strip that claimed U.S.S.R. stood for United States of Soviet Russia. Pleasant memories of elementary school.

[yragentman]

The cloud forms at the air pressure shock wave at the leading edge of the aircraft because the water vapor gets compressed into liquid state.

See
http://www.sv.vt.edu/classes/MSE2094_NoteBook/96ClassProj/pics/941.jpg

[l]

The sonic-boom vid is shot from a Navy ship, trust me. They do that all the time, the pilots really like to do that unexpectedly near support ships, to bust balls, it's impressive. When you can see the jets near water, they look like moths, the vapor coming off the wings in turns and climbs.
Red Dawn is one of those unintentional cult flicks, I like it!
The propaganda film makes me think mostly of the set and people making it, what the hell were they thinking? That goes for 'Red Dawn" too.

[Kendall]

Awesome awesome video clips. I hope someday I'll get to see either the Northern or Southern lights, they seem incredible.

[bsirvio]

Mosinee, Wisconsin! The commies wouldn't take it, anyway. The paper mill smells too bad.

[Wendy]

See also:

http://www.galleryoffluidmechanics.com/conden/pg_sing.htm