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Solar Activity, Northern Lights
GehRehmee writes: "Just a few weeks after the sun's peak in its 11 year cycle, two large CME's (Coronal Mass Ejections) occured on the surface of the sun. Now, as the effects of those eruptions reach earth, we're experiencing an excellent season of aurora, or "Northern Lights". Fantastic red aurora are being reported as far south as central California, and amateur and professional astronomers as far south as 40 degrees latitude are on watch. SpaceWeather.com has all the breaking news, as well as details of the CME's which occurred earlier this week. Take a step outside, get some fresh air, and enjoy the sky. You might just be treated to a rare astronomical opportunity." Maybe people can post links to some of the prettier pictures for those of us (cough, cough) who live in light-polluted cities.
I saw the lights a few years back, and my only description is... whoa.
I suggest anyone that can go see em. It would be cool if we could get some good pics for others to see.
Arathres
stainless steel
I really don't know much about aurora's, so anything would be helpful. I'd like to see the lights, but would rather travel a few hundred km's south then around the planet to north America ;-)
[Enter your default Anonymous Coward .sig here]
For those of you that just want the purdy pictures, have a look at:
http://www.spaceweather.com/aurora/gallery_20mar01 .html - spaceweather's aurora borealis gallery of photos
Or alternatively just go direct to a few pictures found in the gallery:
Enjoy! These things are really a lot more impressive in person, as they dance around the night sky. Picture those early Windows 3.1 screensavers superimposed into space and you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about. (Please, stay seated, Bill Gates doesn't actually rule the universe, that was just a for-instance.)
Saw the lights, really neat.
Kinda sad that I had to be told this by a geek site
In any case, they aren't as impressive as they were in Alaska, I'd bet you it's really interesting up there right now.
Supposedly you can make a device that will "hear" ELF, or the part of the spectrum the lights are related to - as well as listening to the messages sent to US submarines.
(sounds really bad, I'm tired)
Its quite easy to make, as the frequencies are really low, and are about equal to the hearing range of the ear (but are in the EM spectrum as opposed to sound)
I'll post a link tomorow.
Being in an area with rolling blackouts would be cool right about now. . .
Well, gnight. . .
(falls asleep at keyboa
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
is there any chance of us getting an Aurora in the UK??
Solar flares DO play a part in electronics malfunctions. Not near the part that some seem to think and that Hollywood has played up, but a part non-the-less.
Now that computers have minute electronics inside them, I wonder if the flares will affect the computers chips etc.
Radiation screws with electronics, thank goodness for the Van Allen belts around the Earth that shield us from most of it.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
Not just Central California. We saw vivid crimson curtains at Palomar Observatory tonight, at 33 degrees north latitude. One of the night assistants reports last seeing them here around 1981, and to a much lesser degree.
The saddest thing about this is that most people won't even know about it until tommorow morning when it will be to late.
:(
The second saddest thing may be that seattle chose tonight to end its winter drought. Its raining here and so the lights are a no go
Click here to read too much about my personal life
The pictures are here. Some great desktop wallpaper. Surprisingly, a few look exactly like the wallpaper that comes bundled with Mac OS X. :)
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
You know, back where I lived before (Muonio, Finland), Northern Lights were not at all an unusual sight. Last time I saw Northern Lights in Rovajärvi back in late 1999. (Should go to Lapland more often...) So, personally this is not a big deal to me. Ooo, more pretty colors.
But in case you saw this interesting phenomena first time, congrats, now you have got a glimpse of what you've been missing all this time. =)
This is the one time that I get annoyed by living closish to the equator (27 degrees south).
Anyone want to claim the "closest to the equator aurora" award ?
Oh this phenomena is such a beautiful sight.
I'm born in the northern Sweden and I've been used to it from childhood.
When doing my military service in the northern Sweden this became even more visible to me.
When doing guard duty, everything was blacked out, no lights where allowed into the night. Our eyes was adapted to the night and the Aurora was soooo intensive in our eyes. It was so unbelievable beautiful that I even looked forward to guard duty during these cold nights of -35C.
Beeing alone in the night 'guarding' some shit military installation and watching this phenomenoum, I feelt pretty lucky to be one of the few that was on guard these night.
If you haven't seen this phenomenoum first hand in an environment without disturbing lights I strongly suggest that you take any chance to experience that. It's amazingly beutiful.
//Pingo
--- Linux or FreeBSD, it's like blondes or brunettes. I like both. ---
I just rented "Frequency" the other night, what an interesting coincidence. Maybe I should crank up the old ham radio ...
- Mike
and can we see the the northern lights again soon? With NYC only 20 miles away, I am a little doubtful.
Four solar flares and a pair of powerful magnetic gas clouds spawned in a monster sunspot were headed for Earth on Friday and could affect power systems, satellites and some radio transmissions, a top space weather forecaster said.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
No preview on this attempt, since the post seemed to get lost during preview on the first try.
See what I've been reading.
http://magi.yok.utu.fi/~magi/kuvia/series/display. cgi/aurora.ser?height=768
They were taken with Casio QV-3000EX/Ir digital camera. Unfortunately there's no serial or USB driver for Linux for the camera, so I have to boot to the damned winshit to download the pics (it's actually the only thing I use it for). It would be great if the USB storage driver guys or gPhoto guys would get a driver working at last.
The first panorama was made with the Casio Panorama program; it works under WINE just fine. Two panoramas were done with GIMP. Other pics were brightened with xv. The despecle filter of GIMP helps a little with noisy pictures, but perhaps not enough.
I chose Casio QV-3000 especially for its bright lens (F/2.0) and long exposure time (60s), which are important for astrophotography.
Few things are exciting about school in 4th year.
Like sex? Read and write about it! Indecent Blogging
I live further south now (still in Canada -- Winnipeg, to be precise), and we can still see the lights at least once a week, in the winter (if you leave the city).
If you *really* want to fully experience the lights, there's only one place to go - Churchill, MB, Canada. Why Churchill, you ask? As it turns out, it's almost right under the most active Aurora Borealis area on earth. They get visable activity there over 200 nights a year (as i recall - it's been a few years since i've been up there). Various governments around the world have a joint atmospheric studies lab up there, and there's a rocket-launching pad too. Did i mention polar bears?
Oh, hey, some links would probably be cool.
.------------ - - -
| big bad mr. frosty
`------------ - - -
"Sunspot 9393 covers an area of the solar disk equivalent to the combined surface area of 13 planet Earths."
from spaceweather.com
wowza. aren't we tiny.
http://www.hyperpoem.net
hyperpoem.net
Tuesday there was a sunspot large enough to be observed naked-eye (provided you had a solar filter handy!)
You may have even been able to project it, I'm not sure. I took a few shots with my 500mm lens (again, through a solar filter)
but haven't processed the film yet. In addition to the large spot there were a couple dozen smaller spots, all lined up and
converging on the solar equator. I don't know if the aurora has been very evident around here, but I'll take a look tonight.
--Kit
Former Inmate, VA Linux Sanitarium
Maybe people can post links to some of the prettier pictures for those of us (cough, cough) who live in light-polluted cities.
Sounds like you live in an air-polluted city as well.
"And like that
An EMP pulse from a violent solar storm can disrupt communications and power grids on earth. Not that anyone in California would tell the difference :-)
One of the few benefits of living in Alaska... the Aurora, while always beautiful, aren't a major life event. :-)
http://sec.noaa.gov/pmap/pmapN.html
If you really want to see whether you should be getting some of this good stuff in your sky tonight.
I saw them in Montana - pretty kewl since I was right in the middle of town where the light polution is at its greatest.
Heard about it right before I saw them when a 6' tall self proclaimed red-headed geek girl at a party said we were supposed to be able to see them.
Instead of partying hard, this house full of geeks emptied into the street and "oh'd" and "ah'd"...pretty pathetic bunch if you ask me...fridge full of beer and we're out looking at the sky like a bunch o' dorks.
Oh well, they were beautiful just the same.
been dead for years, just haven't stopped moving yet...
Well, I can definately tell that there are solar flares. I might not be able to see the Northern Lights, but my cell phone has certainly become a lot less reliable recently.
Also, you can check out real-time satellite maps showing the extent of the auroral circle (in both N and S hemispheres) at www.sec.noaa.gov (note that the site has down -- or overwhelmed -- intermittently over the past day or so). Of course, if you live someplace dark you can just go outside and see for yourself, but if you're in a light-polluted area like me you can at least tell beforehand whether it's worth taking a drive to someplace with better skies. (Which I attempted to do last night, but unfortunately clouds thwarted my valiant attempt :-( )
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
I once had an opportunity to see the Northern Lights from Norway about 80 miles south of the Arctic circle.
Still, to this day, the single coolest thing I have ever seen. Imagine an all-natural Pink Floyd laser show.
-- jimmycarter
These were taken with a Nikon Coolpix 990... most exposures (at least the good ones) were at least 10 seconds.
here
The 13th and the 24th pictures are pretty good.
Drink a few beers and check out
http://maj.com/sun
Then drink some more beer, and after you decide you need a firewall to protect your network against the sun
http://www.smoothwall.org
* Origin: All you solar flare are belong to maj.com but all you packet are belong to smoothie!
If the aurora borealis can make it to Arizona, anything is possible.
I saw the northern lights last night,
for the first time in my life. It was
beautiful. Too bad my camera couldn't
catch it. But to be in NM to see it was
a special touch.
Here in Vegas the lights probably were not visable. But I took off with some buddies of mine to go out camping to get away from it all. We just spo happened to see 40% of the sky turn bright red. Stood there for hours wondering what it was. Aurora was brought up, but shot down. This far south? Impossable? Guess not. Unbelievable site.
"I couldn't give him (Bill Gates) advice in business and he couldn't give me advice in technology." Linus Torvalds