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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 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??
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 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. =)
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
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.
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
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.
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
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Yes, the Van Allen belts shield us from certain death, but that's not the important thing: they protect our electronics.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
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
My 10-baseT networking was dropping 5% of packets last night. I'm hoping it's the solar flares and NOT a hardware problem.
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.