As most will know the Northern Lights are caused by activity on the sun and we are coming towards the end of the current solar maximum period of, relatively, high activity.
Yesterday a sunspot threw out very significant stream of charged particles towards the earth, and there have been more today. Now it is very difficult indeed to predict if these particles will hit the earth or exactly when they might arrive but there is a possibility that they might arrive sometime around 2200 tonight. Some parts of the country may have clear skies. It is also possible, as we don't know the exact speed of the particles from the sun, that they may not arrive until Friday or even Saturday plus the sunspot in question has pumped out some further streams of particles which will certainly arrive later than "the big one." So if you want to see Aurora make an effort tonight and over the next few nights. Peeking out the curtains for 15 seconds and announcing that there is nothing happening does not count as an effort as your eyes will not have adapted to the dark.
Now it is a total fiction that you need to go to the Arctic to see the Northern Lights and the truth is that the best place to see them is from an area with dark skies near your home as you have access to this all year round and so can quickly get there should conditions be promising. Northern Lights are rarely easily seen over city lights so take yourself to somewhere with dark skies. The following web site shows the output of a magnotometer and this can give a very good idea as to the potential to see lights, large deviations from the normal (shown as a blue line on the graph) mean a very high probability of lights and sharp rises and falls, even if fairly moderate in magnitude, can also give good conditions though for a very brief time. The lights can often be seen even in the south of the UK when the sun and atmospheric conditions are good, it is just that most people simply don't look.
http://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/
Just to give you some encouragement this photo was taken, in urban Belfast complete with a lot of light pollution, from my back garden. I know it isn't a spectacular photo but it wasn't a good display plus this is just a snapshot from the garden with light pollution. With dark skies you'd have seen this much, much further south:
And this image was taken from my back garden in urban Belfast using a simple point and shoot camera at the end of February 2014:
Further north in the UK there are a few photographers on the Isle of Lewis, just 200 miles further north than where these photos were taken but with great dark skies and no hills to cause clouds to form up and hang around, who managed to photograph aurora on about 70 nights in 2014. When you consider that there is too much daylight in summer to get images this means that they were getting aurora pictures on 2 or 3 nights per week during the dark sky season. Colin Cameron put in a bit more effort than I did and got this photo (hope the link works) of the lights over the standing stones at Callanish on the Isle of Lewis just over a year ago, for example:
https://flic.kr/p/kzu3ED
Some background - this is a little bit important because some scientists suspect that our solar maximums are becoming less marked and that we may be entering a phase in the cycles of the sun where there will be little or no sunspot activity, sun activity and output have been increasing since about 1850 or so. This reduced activity also, often, coincides with reduced sun output and was believed responsible for the "Little Ice Age" when there were frost fairs on the River Thames for example. The next solar maximum is not due for another 10 - 11 years but, based on the views of some solar scientists, it is possible that it will be a non-event and so there may be no scope to see Northern Lights during it and, perhaps, during the cycles for the next 200 years or so. Given this if you want to see the lights it is just possible that tonight, or the next few weeks or months, might be the last chance in your lifetime. Given all of this it is worth making a little effort if this is something you might be interested in seeing and if you have kids it is worth letting them see it as well.
Yesterday a sunspot threw out very significant stream of charged particles towards the earth, and there have been more today. Now it is very difficult indeed to predict if these particles will hit the earth or exactly when they might arrive but there is a possibility that they might arrive sometime around 2200 tonight. Some parts of the country may have clear skies. It is also possible, as we don't know the exact speed of the particles from the sun, that they may not arrive until Friday or even Saturday plus the sunspot in question has pumped out some further streams of particles which will certainly arrive later than "the big one." So if you want to see Aurora make an effort tonight and over the next few nights. Peeking out the curtains for 15 seconds and announcing that there is nothing happening does not count as an effort as your eyes will not have adapted to the dark.
Now it is a total fiction that you need to go to the Arctic to see the Northern Lights and the truth is that the best place to see them is from an area with dark skies near your home as you have access to this all year round and so can quickly get there should conditions be promising. Northern Lights are rarely easily seen over city lights so take yourself to somewhere with dark skies. The following web site shows the output of a magnotometer and this can give a very good idea as to the potential to see lights, large deviations from the normal (shown as a blue line on the graph) mean a very high probability of lights and sharp rises and falls, even if fairly moderate in magnitude, can also give good conditions though for a very brief time. The lights can often be seen even in the south of the UK when the sun and atmospheric conditions are good, it is just that most people simply don't look.
http://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/
Just to give you some encouragement this photo was taken, in urban Belfast complete with a lot of light pollution, from my back garden. I know it isn't a spectacular photo but it wasn't a good display plus this is just a snapshot from the garden with light pollution. With dark skies you'd have seen this much, much further south:
And this image was taken from my back garden in urban Belfast using a simple point and shoot camera at the end of February 2014:
Further north in the UK there are a few photographers on the Isle of Lewis, just 200 miles further north than where these photos were taken but with great dark skies and no hills to cause clouds to form up and hang around, who managed to photograph aurora on about 70 nights in 2014. When you consider that there is too much daylight in summer to get images this means that they were getting aurora pictures on 2 or 3 nights per week during the dark sky season. Colin Cameron put in a bit more effort than I did and got this photo (hope the link works) of the lights over the standing stones at Callanish on the Isle of Lewis just over a year ago, for example:
https://flic.kr/p/kzu3ED
Some background - this is a little bit important because some scientists suspect that our solar maximums are becoming less marked and that we may be entering a phase in the cycles of the sun where there will be little or no sunspot activity, sun activity and output have been increasing since about 1850 or so. This reduced activity also, often, coincides with reduced sun output and was believed responsible for the "Little Ice Age" when there were frost fairs on the River Thames for example. The next solar maximum is not due for another 10 - 11 years but, based on the views of some solar scientists, it is possible that it will be a non-event and so there may be no scope to see Northern Lights during it and, perhaps, during the cycles for the next 200 years or so. Given this if you want to see the lights it is just possible that tonight, or the next few weeks or months, might be the last chance in your lifetime. Given all of this it is worth making a little effort if this is something you might be interested in seeing and if you have kids it is worth letting them see it as well.
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