This is a 360° panorama covering the entire sky and extending up to the zenith at centre, capturing a rare SAR (Stable Auroral Red) arc across the Arizona sky in the pre-dawn hours of October 11, 2024. The SAR arc was generated in the high atmosphere as part of the global geomagnetic storm of October 10/11, 2024 with a Kp8 rating that night.

This is rare in that from this latitude of 32° N in southern Arizona it is unusual to get any activity from an aurora storm. But this was a very active night with auroras widely seen around the world.

While a SAR arc is not aurora as such, it is created by highly energized "ring currents" in the magnetosphere generated during an auroral storm, creating a horizontal band of glowing oxyen that is fairly featureless and long-lasting. It was present early in the evening and was still there at 4 am this morning.

North is at bottom with Polaris and the two Dippers above the nortnern horizon, so the SAR arc is across the northern sky. West is at left, east at right, and south is at top, with Orion .

Also in the panorama are two other intersecting bands of light crossing the sky:

- Zodiacal Band and Light:
At left to the west is a subtle vertical band of light, the Zodiacal band, with a bright region called the Gegenschein, caused by sunlight reflecting off interplanetary dust particles opposite the Sun in the outer solar system. It extends across the sky horizontally here from west to east, to meet up with the pre-dawn Zodiacal Light in the east at right.

- The Milky Way:
It is crossing the sky, from Cassiopeia and Perseus from bottom left, passing high overhead at centre, and descending down past Orion and Canis Major at upper right in the southeast. Sirius is the bright star at upper right, with Canopus just peaking above the horizon at top. At centre at the zenith we are looking toward the outer edge of our Galaxy in Perseus and Taurus.

- In addition, at right in the east near the SAR arc's intersection with the hori