Posted on 08/16/2022 4:58:21 PM PDT by John W
The Aurora Borealis was visible in Virginia during the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862. That must have been quite a flare.
OK, I’ll try.
Appreciate it.
Honestly, I’d pay someone to let me know when there’s an aurora visible.
150,000,000 km = 92,592,592 miles. Someone is deficient in math.
It often looks like haze. You may think it's a thin layer of light clouds, especially if there is a city nearby.
The thing to do is to watch it for a few minutes. What looks like haze will be seen to be moving, slowly. Parts of it will get brighter. You may see a sort of streak develop, very slowly. Like a sunbeam hitting a surface at an oblique angle.
You have to watch for a long time to see anything really happen. You may see streaks develop and coalesce into the classic "curtain edge" form, but this happens very slowly, over a period of five or ten minutes, maybe longer. Then it slowly fades and dissipates, and looks like high haze once again.
One night I saw what looked almost like two searchlight beams, viewed from the side. They were directly over my house. Very faint, almost parallel. Again, like a two very oblique beams of something striking a surface. Whitish, not showing any strong color.
Another night I was driving home after working till the wee hours at my old job, in Mattydale. I was driving on 481, the part North of Syracuse, where the highway is heading East-West. I was driving East, with the window open. I noticed what looked like the reddish, scattered light of a distant city, and didn't think anything of it, until I realized that I was looking due North... and (as you know) there is no city north of Syracuse, only Oneida Lake and — beyond that — a hundred miles of Adirondack state forest. That was aurora. It looked exactly like the atmospheric scatter of light from a vast city, somewhere up in the empty Adirondack wilds.
For me, the spooky thing about them is that they are perfectly quiet. So much violent activity — such vast amounts of energy — being dissipated high in the ionosphere and above, at least seventy miles up. Charged particles of solar wind, hitting the lines of Earth's magnetic field at a million miles an hour, spiraling around them and giving off synchrotron radiation as they dissipate their kinetic energy as light. We see only a small part of it with our eyes; it extends from the far UV right down into the HF radio bands.
The best one I ever saw was in March 1990. We were just leaving church when I saw the glow and turned around and watched. I remember because my son was very little and it was a cold night out, but what a classic gorgeous display.
I have seen several other minor ones since then, but none as nice as that one. I saw one once coming up north on I-81. I pulled off at the Preble rest stop to watch it.
I keep an eye out for them and have aurora pages book marked and check them regularly. Here is a link to one.
As the CMEs cross the 900,000-mile 🤔
I saw them in central Ohio in 2002.
saw them at kent state ‘76
I apologize for being pedantic, I should have known you of all people would know how to spot aurora. I’ll keep an eye out on moonless nights. It’s cloudy here often than it is where you are, I suspect.
Don’t worry about it. Likewise, if I see an aurora, I will ping you.
Yes, it is definitely clearer in NH than it is in CNY.
Although, we have had lake effect snow make it to NH from Lake Ontario.
The first time I saw it, I’m looking at it thinking, “It can’t be”. I checked the radar and sure enough, I could see the band reaching us.
*sigh* You can run but you can’t hide.
All we need is another Carrington Event, and I’ll be able to read in the dark outside in Pensacola after my lights go out.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
