Auroras (Northern Lights; Polar Lights)

That was stunning. Thanks, Spudrick.
 
GEOMAGNETIC STORM:

A geomagnetic storm is in progress. It began on August 5th around 1800 UT when a CME struck Earth's magnetic field. At its peak during the hours just after impact, the storm registered 8 on the 0 to 9 "K-index" scale of geomagnetic disturbances, making it one of the strongest magnetic storms in years. The subsiding storm will likely take many more hours to peter out, so high-latitude sky watchers should remain alert for auroras. Aurora alerts: text, voice.

The timing of the CME impact favored observers in Europe. "For the first time, I have seen Northern Lights from England," reports Marvin Watson of Whitehaven, who took this picture just after local midnight on Aug. 6th:

"I spent one and a half hours watching and photographing the aurora across the solway firth towards Scotland," he adds. "It was a wonderful show." Other notable displays occured in Finland, Germany and Poland.

In the United States, auroras were photographed in Montana, Maine, Colorado and even Nebraska.

http://www.spaceweather.com/
 
Finally got to see my first aurora this evening, it was minute, just a small portion of the horizon, but it was bright green and you could see movement in it. Yay!
 
Northern Lights illuminate the UK
The Aurora Borealis - better known as the Northern Lights - has been giving rare and spectacular displays over parts of the UK, from the north of Scotland to as far south as Essex and Gloucestershire.

The lights have also been clearly visible in places such as Orkney, Norfolk, and south Wales.

With several Big pics! :D

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26378027
 
 
'Rare' Northern Lights photographed in Cornwall and Exmoor

A "rare" sighting of the Northern Lights have been photographed in the far south west of England.
Sarah and Jem Burrows from St Agnes in Cornwall said they were "still buzzing" after capturing the bright pink glow in the early hours of Tuesday.
Experts said it had been predicted in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
They said the couple were "very lucky" to see it so far south. There were also reports of the Northern Lights being seen on Exmoor.

Mrs Burrows said she and her husband, a northern lights - or Aurora Borealis - enthusiast, had got "very excited" at space conditions and he persuaded her to go with him to St Agnes Beacon.
"We couldn't believe we were stood in Cornwall witnessing a phenomena we have travelled to Norway to see", she said.
"She put on an amazing show. I was very emotional".

Members of Exmoor Search and Rescue say they also photographed the spectacle
Brian Sheen, from the Roseland Observatory in Cornwall, said the Northern Lights could be seen around once a year in Cornwall but were rarely noticed or captured.
"We don't get it so brilliantly down here as they do in the north. I've only see it three or four times in my life", he said.
Mr Sheen said the display was caused by a burst of gases kicked out from sun spots that interact with the Earth's magnetic field and hit the atmosphere creating "these lovely colours".

Dr Chris Arridge, of Lancaster University Physics Department, said: "If there is greater solar activity, they can, on rare occasions, be seen further south, if the conditions are favourable."

The Met Office, based in Exeter, said on its blog that the country could have another night of "spectacular aurora views" on Wednesday.
"To see the northern lights, wait until at least half an hour after sunset, go outside away from artificial lights, let your eyes accustom to the dark and look towards the north," the Met Office said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-33235192

Pics on page. It's still practically midsummer, so the night sky doesn't get completely dark, even in Cornwall.
 
Northern Lights: The traditional explanation for the aurora borealis is wrong, physicist says
The Earth plays a much bigger role in creating the amazing light show than most people realise
Ian Johnston at the British Science Festival, Swansea

The Northern Lights are one of the most spectacular natural events on the planet.
The usual explanation given by tour guides and in books is that charged particles carried by solar winds from the sun hit the Earth’s magnetic field.

But if this was the whole story, the aurora borealis, named after the ancient Greek goddess of the dawn, Aurora, and Boreas, the Greek name for the north wind, would hardly be visible as it would take place during the day, physicist Dr Melanie Windridge pointed out.
And the particles themselves do not actually have enough energy to create some of the staggering light shows seen closer to the poles.

A key part of the process is missing.

After journeying to northern latitudes to learn about traditional cultures views of the lights for a popular science book on the subject, Dr Windridge gave a talk on the subject at the British Science Festival.
Speaking ahead of the event, she told The Independent there was “so much more to it” than the traditional explanation about charged particles from the sun hitting the Earth's magnetic field.

“If they were coming in directly, they would come in during the day time and the aurora happens at night,” she said.
“So something is happening to get these charged particles round to the night side of the Earth.
“The particles that come in directly don’t have enough energy to make the sort of vibrant displays that we see.
“Somewhere those electrons are being accelerated, there has to be acceleration.”

That key part of the process is largely provided by the Earth, specifically its magnetic field.
This protects life on the planet from being killed off by radiation from the Sun.

It has a basic pattern but is constantly moving and it is here that the aurora is created.
“In the Earth’s magnetic field, the lines snap and rejoin in a new configuration and this snapping and rejoining releases huge amounts of energy,” Dr Windridge said.

This takes the particles from the sun and hurls them onto the dark side of the Earth with tremendous force. A video produced by Nasa explains the process.

Dr Windridge, whose book Aurora: In Search of the Northern Lights is already published in hardback, said she had travelled through countries including Iceland, Sweden, Norway and Canada asking local people about the effect.
“A reindeer herder in northern Norway told me the aurora was a natural baby sitter,” she said.
“The parents would tell their children that they mustn’t be home late or the aurora would get them.

“And there’s an old Sami story about a boy who was mocking the moon and the sun and then he mocked the Northern Lights and was struck down and killed.”
But she said for people who saw it regularly, the Northern Lights were simply part of everyday life.

“The reindeer herder told me it’s just like weather, like the rain or the wind. It was such a normal thing for them.”
Despite her travels, Dr Windridge has not yet seen the most dramatic light shows that can be produced by the effect.
“I’m still waiting for that incredible lighting up of the whole sky,” she said. “I still haven’t seen that big display, but I’m planning to go to Iceland in November.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...tion-wrong-magnetic-field-earth-a7233936.html

Many photos on page.
 
The Northern Lights are a spectacle many people travel to Iceland to see, but police are having to warn tourists not to try to view them while driving.
Officers in southern Iceland say that twice last week they had to pull over cars driving erratically, initially on suspicion that the drivers had been drinking. But on both occasions the entirely sober visitors were simply mesmerised by the appearance of the Aurora Borealis in the sky above them, Iceland Magazine reports. The site has dubbed it "driving under the influence of the Aurora".
The first incident was on the road to the airport, with the car swerving between lanes. "The driver told the police he saw the Northern Lights and couldn't bring himself to stop looking at them," a police statement said. "The police asked him to park the vehicle if he wanted to keep on gazing at the sky."
Tourists don't always make life easy for Icelanders, especially behind the wheel. In 2015, a roads official complained that visitors were causing collisions by stopping their cars abruptly in the middle of the road in order to photograph sheep, horses "or anything else which captures their attention". He suggested that creating designated photo stops could ease the problem.

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-38970477
 
A stunning new kind of northern lights has been discovered, and it looks like glowing waves gently lapping a beach in the sky

Source: insider.com
Date: 5 February, 2020

A new kind of northern lights has been discovered by amateur astronomers.

Known as "dunes," the incredible glowing shapes look like waves lapping up a beach in the sky.

By collating photos of the mysterious unidentified form of the aurora borealis, enthusiasts and scientists were able to understand the science behind it.

Citizen scientists teamed up with space researchers to find the "new auroral form," which consists of spectacular glowing waves.

The "dunes" are thought to be created when particles released by the sun cause oxygen atoms in our atmosphere to light up and glow.

In a newly published study, researchers tracked down the origin of the dunes to the Earth's upper atmosphere.

https://www-insider-com.cdn.ampproj...3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s
 
Auroral "beads" are relatively discrete blobs of auroral observed strung across the sky in advance of significant auroral events. Recent analysis of THEMIS satellite data provides an initial hypothesis as to what the beads represent and how they're involved in auroral display phenomena

Here's an unusually clear and dramatic photo of auroral beads from the article cited below (Canada; 2015).

Auroral-Beads-Saskatoon-2048x1367.jpg

​
Mystery of Auroral Beads Uncovered With NASA’s THEMIS Spacecraft

A special type of aurora, draped east-west across the night sky like a glowing pearl necklace, is helping scientists better understand the science of auroras and their powerful drivers out in space. Known as auroral beads, these lights often show up just before large auroral displays, which are caused by electrical storms in space called substorms. Previously, scientists weren’t sure if auroral beads are somehow connected to other auroral displays as a phenomenon in space that precedes substorms, or if they are caused by disturbances closer to Earth’s atmosphere.

But powerful new computer models combined with observations from NASA’s Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms – THEMIS – mission have provided the first strong evidence of the events in space that lead to the appearance of these beads, and demonstrated the important role they play in our near space environment.

“Now we know for certain that the formation of these beads is part of a process that precedes the triggering of a substorm in space,” said Vassilis Angelopoulos, principal investigator of THEMIS at the University of California, Los Angeles. “This is an important new piece of the puzzle.” ...
Click to expand...

FULL STORY: https://scitechdaily.com/mystery-of-auroral-beads-uncovered-with-nasas-themis-spacecraft/
 
Excellent shots. Wish I took some shots years ago when in subarctic Canada. They are stunning.
 
rynner2 said:
Northern Lights: The traditional explanation for the aurora borealis is wrong, physicist says
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...tion-wrong-magnetic-field-earth-a7233936.html
Click to expand...

Here's another possible clue indicating the earth plays a more active role than simply serving as a sort of receptacle for solar wind particles. As it turns out, new data from the SWARM satellites indicates solar wind particles are preferentially drawn to the earth's north polar area rather than the south. No one has a good explanation for why this should be.
Energy from solar wind favours the north

Using information from ESA’s Swarm satellite constellation, scientists have made a discovery about how energy generated by electrically-charged particles in the solar wind flows into Earth’s atmosphere – surprisingly, more of it heads towards the magnetic north pole than towards the magnetic south pole. ...

Until now, it was assumed the same amount of electromagnetic energy would reach both hemispheres. However, a paper, published in Nature Communications, describes how research led by scientists from the University of Alberta in Canada used data from ESA’s Swarm mission to discover, unexpectedly, that the electromagnetic energy transported by space weather clearly prefers the north.

These new findings suggest that in addition to shielding Earth from incoming solar radiation, the magnetic field also actively controls how the energy is distributed and channelled into the upper atmosphere.

The paper’s lead author, Ivan Pakhotin who is carrying out this research as part of ESA’s Living Planet Fellowship, explains, “Because the south magnetic pole is further away from Earth’s spin axis than the north magnetic pole, an asymmetry is imposed on how much energy makes its way down towards Earth in the north and south. There seems to be a differential reflection of electromagnetic plasma waves, known as Alfven waves.

“We are not yet sure what the effects of this asymmetry might be, but it could also indicate a possible asymmetry in space weather and perhaps also between the Aurora Australis in the south and the Aurora Borealis in the north. Our findings also suggest that the dynamics of upper-atmospheric chemistry may vary between the hemispheres, especially during times of strong geomagnetic activity.” ...
Click to expand...

FULL STORY: https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Swarm/Energy_from_solar_wind_favours_the_north

See Also: https://www.sciencealert.com/solar-...s-north-pole-than-south-and-we-don-t-know-why
 
Gorgeous as all of those pictures are, I think it's worth pointing out that you are unlikely to see anything resembling that with youir naked eye or to capture it with the camera on your mobile phone.

I went on a Northern Lights boat trip out into the North Atlantic from Reykjavik a couple of years back.
All I saw and managed to photograph on my Blackberry's camera, was a vague greenish wash across part of the sky.
Several other guys on the trip were using tripods and professional looking SLR cameras. The Icelandic team on the boat advised that, to see the "swirling curtain" effect of the lights, you do need a top-notch camera, with a wide and very fast lens.
It was still wonderful to tick that off my bucket list, but the experience was not quite as spectacular as I anticipated.
 
When I was about 22, I was on a long weekend camping trip for the Clear Lake Opening. It's an annual event here.

There were lots of people and lots of drinking. I had all these drunk people convinced that if they whistled and clapped their hands that they could make the Northern Lights dance. lol
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
Gorgeous as all of those pictures are, I think it's worth pointing out that you are unlikely to see anything resembling that with youir naked eye or to capture it with the camera on your mobile phone. ...
It was still wonderful to tick that off my bucket list, but the experience was not quite as spectacular as I anticipated.
Click to expand...

The scope and intensity of the lights can vary quite a bit. The most impressive photographs illustrate the most impressive extreme to which the phenomenon can manifest. The displays are more often wispy and pale, as you describe them.

During winter months when I was living in northern Sweden I made a point to hike to and from my university office (circa 1.5 - 2 miles) on the bike / pedestrian pathway that was routed away from streets and was often surrounded by forest. Many nights the hike was magical owing to aurora displays that spanned the entire sky overhead (horizon to horizon) and were bright enough to cast dancing shadows among the trees.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
Gorgeous as all of those pictures are, I think it's worth pointing out that you are unlikely to see anything resembling that with youir naked eye or to capture it with the camera on your mobile phone.

I went on a Northern Lights boat trip out into the North Atlantic from Reykjavik a couple of years back.
All I saw and managed to photograph on my Blackberry's camera, was a vague greenish wash across part of the sky.
Several other guys on the trip were using tripods and professional looking SLR cameras. The Icelandic team on the boat advised that, to see the "swirling curtain" effect of the lights, you do need a top-notch camera, with a wide and very fast lens.
It was still wonderful to tick that off my bucket list, but the experience was not quite as spectacular as I anticipated.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't say it was all that unlikely. I have seen many gorgeous displays. But yes, a good camera will pick up what your eye can't see.
 
Nice pics of the Norhern lights over Lossiemouth and Moray last night shown on bbc breakfast this morning, cant find a link though :(
 
A new auroral phenomenon or effect called 'diffuse auroral erasers' has been identified in video footage from 2002.
Scientists Discover New Auroral Phenomenon Hidden in 19-Year-Old Video Footage

Not all auroras slither through the sky like snakes. Some – called diffuse aurora – are more like an even glow dispersed throughout the sky.

Scientists know a fair bit about these diffuse auroras, but an old video from 2002 revealing what seems to be an undocumented auroral phenomenon shows we definitely don't know everything.

"We found these events in a movie taken the night of March 15, 2002 in Churchill, [Manitoba], Canada," the researchers write in a summary of their research.

"They appear as a section of diffuse aurora that rapidly brightens, then disappears and also erases the background aurora. Then, over the course of several tens of seconds, the diffuse aurora recovers to its original brightness." ...

The team, made up scientists from the University of Iowa, University of Calgary, and NASA, has dubbed the phenomenon 'diffuse auroral erasers'.

The researchers think this is the first time this phenomenon has been reported in the scientific literature, and they have no idea what's causing them. ...
Click to expand...
FULL STORY (With Illustrative Video):
https://www.sciencealert.com/scient...f-auroral-phenomenon-from-a-20-year-old-video

PUBLISHED REPORT:
The Diffuse Auroral Eraser
R. N. Troyer A. N. Jaynes S. L. Jones D. J. Knudsen T. S. Trondsen
Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics
First published: 18 February 2021
https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JA028805

Abstract & Plain Language Summary Accessible At:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020JA028805
 
This Live Science article provides a summary of the research into, and evidence of, perceptible sounds generated by the Northern Lights.
People have long claimed to hear the northern lights. Are the reports true?

It's a question that has puzzled observers for centuries: do the fantastic green and crimson light displays of the aurora borealis produce any discernible sound?

... Reports of the aurora making a noise, however, are rare — and were historically dismissed by scientists.

But a Finnish study in 2016 claimed to have finally confirmed that the northern lights really do produce sound audible to the human ear. A recording made by one of the researchers involved in the study even claimed to have captured the sound made by the captivating lights 70 meters above ground level. ...

Still, the mechanism behind the sound remains somewhat mysterious, as are the conditions that must be met for the sound to be heard. My recent research takes a look over historic reports of auroral sound to understand the methods of investigating this elusive phenomenon and the process of establishing whether reported sounds were objective, illusory or imaginary. ...
Click to expand...
FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/people-hear-the-northern-lights
 
Jim said:
Enola seen the northern lights Awesome, as well as some very strange lighting up in Hudsons bay area. But never heard this natural magnetic wonder
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When I was living in northern Sweden during the colder months I'd hike to and from my university office on a forested pedestrian / bike path with the Northern Lights dancing all across the sky from horizon to horizon. It was beautifully surreal. Even during that long period of exposure to the phenomenon I never heard any sound or noise that seemed to be associated with the aurora itself.
 
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EnolaGaia said:
When I was living in northern Sweden during the colder months I'd hike to and from my university office on a forested pedestrian / bike path with the Northern Lights dancing all across the sky from horizon to horizon. It was beautifully surreal. Even during that long period of exposure to the phenomenon I never heard any sound or noise that seemed to be associated with the aurora itself.
Click to expand...
same here
 
I can only crave forgiveness as I have yet to master the mystery’s of the forum search engine
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