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Merged Here comes another Aurora Borealis

BTMO said:
The best one I ever saw was when I lived in Sydney back in the mid-late 90s. I was playing a game on the PC in a well lit room. I caught a glimpse of something out of the window and turned my head. A bright green, readily visible fireball was falling into the sea over past the city. It lit up the sky for ages!
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The first one I saw was while driving across TX to Mardi Gras. It went parallel to the horizon for a very long time then broke into pieces before disappearing.

But nothing toped watching the Leonids Meteor Storm in the high desert in AZ. It was one fireball after another for hours. They went off like flashcubes and left a lot of green trails. :D


Well, it's dark now so of course the storm subsided.
 
Last night was storming all the way through this morning, just not enough to see the aurora at the Seattle latitudes. HOWEVER, there's a current sunspot hurling CMEs toward Earth like rice at a wedding. M and X flare CMEs will be bumping the magnetosphere for the next couple days.

http://www.spaceweather.com/
 
From the Noaa spaceweather alert page:
WATCH: Geomagnetic A-index of 50 or greater predicted
NOAA Scale: Periods reaching the G3 (Strong) Level Likely
Valid for UTC Day: 2012 Mar 08
Potential Impacts: Area of impact primarily poleward of 50 degrees Geomagnetic Latitude.
Induced Currents - Power system voltage irregularities possible, false alarms may be triggered on some protection devices.
Spacecraft - Systems may experience surface charging; increased drag on low Earth-orbit satellites and orientation problems may occur.
Navigation - Intermittent satellite navigation (GPS) problems, including loss-of-lock and increased range error may occur.
Radio - HF (high frequency) radio may be intermittent.
Aurora - Aurora may be seen as low as Pennsylvania to Iowa to Oregon.
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It's cloudy here. :(
 
Here is a video I made showing the X5-class flare at about 00:30 UTC this morning and much activity since...

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OK, so the storm is a dud so far. But what a crack up the news missed that little detail and they continue to release stories as if the big one arrived. :rolleyes:

I'm waiting to see if that was the X5 impact or perhaps one of the M flare side glances. Either way the few times the sky cleared here I was able to watch the sky and it was no use. If we still get another impact it will likely be during the day here.

Guess I'll have to keep waiting.
 
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Dang, I came that close last night. The sky was clear, I was able to watch quite a bit, but the storm level was one tick under what it takes to see the aurora at this latitude. The storm reached Kp7/G3. You can see the aurora on the horizon here at Kp8/G4 and you can see it across the sky at Kp9/G4.

If it is dark where you are, the storm is still in progress.
At first, yesterday's widely-reported CME impact produced little in the way of Earth effects. Since then things have changed. The wake of the CME was actually more effective than the CME itself in stirring up geomagnetic activity, and now a moderate geomagnetic storm is underway.
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Another M class flare is headed this way but we have cloudy nights predicted for the next week.
CHANCE OF FLARES: NOAA forecasters estimate a 40% chance of an X-class solar flare today from big sunspot AR1429. The sunspot is almost directly facing Earth, so any such eruptions should be geoeffective.
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(Quotes are from Spaceweather.com.)
 
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Here we go!

http://www.spaceweather.com/

X-FLARE! Big sunspot AR1520 unleashed an X1.4-class solar flare on July 12th at 1653 UT. Because the sunspot was directly facing Earth at the time of the blast, this is a geoeffective event. Stay tuned for updates about possible CMEs and radio blackouts.
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From Spaceweather, an update:
REVISED FORECAST: The CME launched toward Earth by yesterday's X-flare is moving faster than originally thought. Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab have revised their forecast accordingly, advancing the cloud's expected arrival time to 09:17 UT (5:17 am EDT) on Saturday, July 14th. Weekend auroras are likely.
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There's a pretty decent thunderstorm moving through my area right now. Clear skies, 2 am tonight remain iffy. But I'm setting the alarm. :D
 
Here in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of Western NY the sky has been crystal clear for about two weeks. The clouds moved in today....rassem fraken...
 
Wolrab said:
Here in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of Western NY the sky has been crystal clear for about two weeks. The clouds moved in today....rassem fraken...
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Same here, we just had a 3-4 day stretch of very clear with the clouds moving in today. But I'm going to remain positive. Like flipping those coins, a streak of tails has to eventually end. At some point a clear sky and an incoming CME are going to hit on the same night.
 
If anyone is up early Sunday, look east before the sun rises (this is for North America), and you can see a wonderful conjunction. You have a waning crescent moon and around it are the planets Jupiter and Venus, along with the bright star Aldebaran along with the Pleiades cluster (the Seven Sisters). The separation of (from the bottom - up) Jupiter, Aldebaran, Moon, and Venus is only about 6.5 degrees, with the Sisters further up.

The best part is that the Moon is only a sliver, so getting everything in a photo should be easy.
 
Clear night in East Lothian, but still light at 11pm.
Anything in the night sky would need to be pretty bright to be noticed here at this time of year.
 
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