Northern Lights - Aurora - your last chance to see??

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caorach

Forager
Nov 26, 2014
156
0
UK
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.
 

Teepee

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Jan 15, 2010
4,115
5
Northamptonshire
KP index of 2-3 means we won't see anything down here tonight.

At my latitude, it needs to hit 9 to have much chance and that is very rare. We are approaching the best time for auroras, the equinox. Both equinox's very often deliver the goods, almost guaranteed at higher latiitudes.

No worry about solar activity Petro, it's completely natural and normal. It may well promote cooler winters than average but at least we won't be plunged into electronic armageddon with another Carrington event.
 

caorach

Forager
Nov 26, 2014
156
0
UK
Thank you for that very thorough and helpful passage, I hope to see them soon. And that's a bit of a worry about the solar activity.

Well, nothing so far which, of course, means that you haven't missed anything. Hopefully it doesn't hit during daylight. Fingers crossed for tonight. As I said it can be a tad tricky to predict when this might arrive and the first estimates were for around 2200 last night.

Certainly reduced sun output has potential to be a major worry for us, especially if we go into one of the big minimums, as colder weather is going to be a pain here but will be a really significant event in more marginal areas such as Canada or Russia. The Russians are already preparing for colder conditions and are building new ice breakers and so on as a contingency as their solar scientists, an area Russia seems very good in, have been predicting significant cooling for a long time now so the government are planning around this.
 

caorach

Forager
Nov 26, 2014
156
0
UK
Did you see the lights by naked eye, or only when you took the pic?

Both those pictures were of aurora that was easily naked eye visible. It is sometimes the case that a very faint aurora can be seen in a long exposure photo but not with the naked eye.

I've no experience of night sky photography, in fact you are looking at the sum total of my nighttime photos, so these aurora were probably actually brighter to the naked eye than in the photos. Of course it takes you to be out a while to let the eyes adapt.

At the minute it looks like the CME still hasn't hit us so there is still hope. Even if the hit isn't a big one it is sometimes the case that the sharp leading edge can give aurora for maybe half an hour even if there is nothing to be seen for the rest of the duration of the storm. The first photo I posted above was taken on a night like that, there was only a tiny sharp spike on the magnetometer and the aurora only lasted for 20 minutes.
 

caorach

Forager
Nov 26, 2014
156
0
UK
It looks like this hasn't ended well as there was no big hit last night so this raises the distinct possibility that the "big" CME has simply missed us. There were a good number of photos from the Hebrides last night, as lots of people were probably out with cameras waiting for "the big one," but they all show a pretty weak display that amounts to little more than a green glow with a little bit of structure.

Even if "the big one" has missed us there are still a few other smaller ones out there that might combine to give us a big hit over the next day or so but that takes a lot of factors to come together to give us that lucky break and it may not be strong enough to be clearly seen into the south of the country.

So, a bit of a downer but I was hopeful that we might had got one last big event in this current cycle. All we can do now is keep the fingers crossed that the sun gets very active over the next month or so. I will try to keep everyone informed if I see any info that points that way as because of the cyclical nature of sun activity if this is something you want to see then it is probably important to see it in the next month or so.
 

Teepee

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Jan 15, 2010
4,115
5
Northamptonshire
It's not over yet, that sunspot is still crackling. It's now facing earth directly and as it passes round, it's more likely to have an earth directed component. There is often a spike in output as solar activity wanes, the next couple of years could still deliver something, especially up in northern scotland where KP5 level events are visible. 2012 wasn't quite solar max, but saw a sunpsot spew out a huge X-class flare that would have wreaked havoc down here.

Despite low solar activity, the earths magnetic field is slowly weakening, allowing easeir penetration of charged particles to the ionosphere.
 

mousey

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Jun 15, 2010
2,210
254
42
NE Scotland
I didn't see anything over the weekend. I do live in a small town so a bit of light pollution but I have a clear view out over the north sea where there are substantially less lights. I'll still keep an eye out - although maybe not tonight as the clouds are about and don't look like they're going to go away.
 

caorach

Forager
Nov 26, 2014
156
0
UK
Although this last weekend looked like it was in the frame for some good aurora in truth very little happened, there were a few photos and videos from the Hebrides but it was nothing spectacular.

Tomorrow (17th) and the day after are predicted to offer a reasonable chance of aurora but it all depends on how hard it hits as to whether we get to see anything worthwhile or not. As we are running out of time on the current cycle it is worth making the effort to take a look as it could be a long time before there is much activity again.
 

caorach

Forager
Nov 26, 2014
156
0
UK
Things are looking pretty good for tonight so well worth taking a look if you have dark skies as there is a really quite severe storm in progress at present and if it keeps going until after dark you may be in luck.

It is impossible to predict who will see what. Sometimes a big spike or other disruption is enough to have people right into the south of the country seeing good lights, other times things look good and nothing happens. So, even if you are quite far south if you have dark skies and no clouds then get out and have a look tonight. That big sharp downward spike around 1400 was probably enough to light up the skies in London, only it arrived in daylight :-(

http://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/
 

mousey

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Jun 15, 2010
2,210
254
42
NE Scotland
The clouds that rolled over yesterday have merged together to create one big cloud from horizon to horizon, it doesn't seem to want to move, so looks like no show for me :(.
 

caorach

Forager
Nov 26, 2014
156
0
UK
The clouds that rolled over yesterday have merged together to create one big cloud from horizon to horizon, it doesn't seem to want to move, so looks like no show for me :(.

That's a bummer, it looks like cloud might clear from a lot of areas later in the evening so keep the fingers crossed. We took a pretty big hit around 1400 and are sort of depending on that keeping going. If it is true to form it will stop just as it gets dark :)
 

bobnewboy

Native
Jul 2, 2014
1,293
847
West Somerset
Cloudy here in Surrey, so no go even though there has been a red alert from Aurora Watch. Thankfully i've got my pix from Tromso 14 months back to look thru.....
 

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