Sun Activity | Auroras

[Rush]

1 hour ago, MaineJay said:

And the minute it is dark, go check. I've made the mistake of waiting till it was darker, only catch the tail end. 

The magnitude of the brightness was shocking, I want to say things like, "once-in-a-generation", or even lifetime, but there's been a few amazing storms in this solar cycle.  

That sunspot will rotate back around in 10 days or so, never know with the sun, makes it more special to catch them. 

  And there's always the data gap. They have to first try and discern what, if anything ejected from the sun, then wait until it hits the ACE satellite almost 1 million miles from Earth at Lagrange point 1.  That gives only about an hour of real heads up, and even then, ACE might not even be able to "see" how much is coming towards Earth, but only the strength of what passes by the satellite, if that makes sense. 

  In any event, we are getting away from the equinox, so that will make them as little more difficult, but by no means the deciding factor.  A big storm probably doesn't care.

It feels like a once in a lifetime type event but I sometimes wonder if we've just been unlucky during the previous solar cycle in that there were few earth directed CMEs.  We've had two major storms this year.  Just need the luck of having them come towards us.  I don't know if there is any kind of historic records of aurora visibility in London or something over the last few hundred years to compare the frequency of the past with today.  Obviously you need a bigger storm to see it through the light pollution.  Last night light pollution didn't matter during those flare ups.  Heck the first one it was still pretty bright out.

[Rush]

2 hours ago, Tater said:

I thought the GI Alaska (https://www.gi.alaska.edu/monitors/aurora-forecast) site was more accurate. It showed pretty far south last evening when I checked, though not as far south as the historical data shows now for yesterday.

Last night I could see the red to my south here in Maryland so you know you could see that very far south, probably into the Caribbean.