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jeffy at 02:01am on 08/11/2004
jeffy at 02:01am on 08/11/2004A few years back there was an aurora event that was seen all across the US. I didn't see it.
I was bummed out by this. I went looking to see if this was something that could be predicted so that I might have some warning the next time.
Turns out the geomagnetic interaction with the solar wind is, as the name implies, like weather. It's not random, but it's hard to predict. Fortunately scientists as a rule aren't scared away from things that are "hard". There's a satellite that measures the geomagnetic disturbances that sometimes manifest as aurorae. Not only that, but they're starting to be able to predict it a little. And geeks being geeks, some have set up a service where you can subscribe to get alerts when the probability of a visible aurora is high.
I signed up for alerts a couple of years ago with the email going to my pager and recently redirected it to my cell phone. I got lots of pages but they'd be during the day or when it was cloudy out (which hardly ever happens here in the northwest) or I'd go outside to look and there'd be nothing there.
Tonight I finally got my first look. I didn't really know what I was looking for since all I've ever seen are still photographs and simulated aurora in movies. I think there's a lot of variability, but what I saw tonight was really cool.
Extending from the northern horizon, half-way across the sky, there were relatively static striated blobs of greenish white light obscuring the stars. At first I thought they were clouds, but as I watched they slowly grew and shrank, always maintaining the striations. As my eyes got used to the darkness (relatively speaking. I live in an urban area with street lights and a busy highway just to the north of me), I could see bright patches streaking across the sky like a dusting of snow blown across a road by a heavy wind. The bright patches moved faster than any satellite, nearly as fast as a meteor, but much broader and less directed. They faded in and out giving an almost random flashing of light and dark all across the northern portion of the sky.
It was really neat. B and I stood outside watching for a long time before we got too cold and our necks started kinking from looking up too long.
I was bummed out by this. I went looking to see if this was something that could be predicted so that I might have some warning the next time.
Turns out the geomagnetic interaction with the solar wind is, as the name implies, like weather. It's not random, but it's hard to predict. Fortunately scientists as a rule aren't scared away from things that are "hard". There's a satellite that measures the geomagnetic disturbances that sometimes manifest as aurorae. Not only that, but they're starting to be able to predict it a little. And geeks being geeks, some have set up a service where you can subscribe to get alerts when the probability of a visible aurora is high.
I signed up for alerts a couple of years ago with the email going to my pager and recently redirected it to my cell phone. I got lots of pages but they'd be during the day or when it was cloudy out (which hardly ever happens here in the northwest) or I'd go outside to look and there'd be nothing there.
Tonight I finally got my first look. I didn't really know what I was looking for since all I've ever seen are still photographs and simulated aurora in movies. I think there's a lot of variability, but what I saw tonight was really cool.
Extending from the northern horizon, half-way across the sky, there were relatively static striated blobs of greenish white light obscuring the stars. At first I thought they were clouds, but as I watched they slowly grew and shrank, always maintaining the striations. As my eyes got used to the darkness (relatively speaking. I live in an urban area with street lights and a busy highway just to the north of me), I could see bright patches streaking across the sky like a dusting of snow blown across a road by a heavy wind. The bright patches moved faster than any satellite, nearly as fast as a meteor, but much broader and less directed. They faded in and out giving an almost random flashing of light and dark all across the northern portion of the sky.
It was really neat. B and I stood outside watching for a long time before we got too cold and our necks started kinking from looking up too long.
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