Aurora

[Ianab]

Forecast solar storm was all over the news today, promising an exceptional aurora display. We seldom get to see it here, too far North, but we ventured out after dark to see if we could at least capture it with cameras. Brightest I've ever seen, with visible colours and shifting bands of light.

We went up to the National Park gates, higher up and away from town lights. Sitting there waiting for our eyes to adjust I leaned out the car window to do a test shot with the camera. Had a look at the shot, and said to Lil that the show had started. Just a small blotch of colour initially.



It soon grew and was naked eye visible, although more detail from the camera. Widest shot couldn't get all the light in the frame.  



Playing around, doing a time exposure while flashing a torch across the girls to light them up and get the lights in the background.

[thecfarm]

Nice!!!
Wife was up at 10 but nothing at that time.

[Jeff]

Rain here.

[NewYankeeSawmill]

Sky looked very similar to what @IanB posted outside Knoxville, TN....
I saw them once when I was at college in Oswego, but that might have been the mushrooms?



Can't believe they had an impact this far south... No electrical issues to report, but I've never seen the sky that color before. Freaky. You can see how earlier in human history how events like this would result in myths and stories being told for generations...

[Ljohnsaw]

What we saw just NE of Sacramento.

[Old Greenhorn]

Solid cloud cover here last night. What time are you folks seeing this show the best? What time does it start for you? I know my ham friends are having fun with the Aurural propagation on the VHF bands, because it's rare, but the HF bands I suspect are in the dumps for the same reason.
 Just curious when y'all are seeing it best?

[NewYankeeSawmill]

But cow farts are causing all the warm weather...       

[newoodguy78]

Solid cloud cover here last night. What time are you folks seeing this show the best? What time does it start for you? I know my ham friends are having fun with the Aurural propagation on the VHF bands, because it's rare, but the HF bands I suspect are in the dumps for the same reason.
 Just curious when y'all are seeing it best?

OG I saw them last night a bit after 11 in southwestern Mass. Not sure if it got more brilliant or not. Hadn't heard anything about them and thought I was seeing things at first , of course there wasn't anybody around to confirm what was going on. Was kind of a reddish color here.
Type of thing that just makes you stand there and feel humbled.

[SawyerTed]

We saw similar to Ljohbsaw.   

[barbender]

 I went and looked at them last night around 11 pm from the shores of a large local lake. They were muted, not as dramatic as I was expecting from all of the forecasts. 

 I guarantee most of the dramatic pictures you will see are due to cell phone cameras going into automatic night mode. In person they wee underwhelming compared to displays I've seen in the past, but when we took pictures with our phones they were stunning. I told my son, "take another picture so I can see how awesome they are!"😁 

 What was different was all of the areas they were visible from. It's a fairly common occurrence for the Aurora to be visible from northern MN, but not northern Texas!

[barbender]

 This is from my wife's phone. This is NOT what it looked like in person.

[Ianab]

Yes the pictures from a decent camera are much better than our eyes can see. My pictures are from a DSLR on a tripod, with around a 5 second exposure. So the camera sensor can collect a lot more light over that time. Lil's new Samsung phone probably captured it even better, and also processes the image as it saves.

But the show here was naked eye visible, and across a wide area of sky, so it was brighter then what we occasionally do see, which is only a faint glow near the horizon. Even the faint glow in the first picture was naked eye visible as our eyes adjusted to the dark, and as the show picked up you could see the bands and streaks move.

Time to view it depends on exactly when the "storm" reaches Earth. Its basically a shower of extra charged particles that have been ejected from the Sun. If the get spat in Earth's direction, the get caught in the Earth's magnetic field and funnelled toward the poles, where they become concentrated as they enter the atmosphere. So they become bright enough to see, and they can dance as the waves of particles vary.


The show last night went from about 6pm to 9 pm, after that it basically vanished as that shower has passed. Phase of the moon also helps as less background light with no moon. Bonus was that the kids could also see the milky way properly, saw some shooting stars, and heard wild kiwi calling from the forest behind up. Kiwi have quite an eerie screech, especially on a quiet still night. Good background noise for telling camp fire stories...

[SwampDonkey]

I saw them at 2 am. Wasn't all that colorful, I thought they were thin clouds. But I said to myself  they have to be borealis. Didn't know until this morning on the radio. I wasn't all that impressed.   Starry sky here last night. Suppose to see more tonight. I think it is going to be mostly clear around mid night here. All the forecasted rain here was just the opposite, and more sun than was ever forecasted. Cloudy this afternoon with some sun, but sunny all morning. Planted some garden, onions.

[Ianab]

This is what's actually causing the show. A patch of sunspots are throwing out the extra particles. As the sun rotates they spray out in different directions, like a crazy garden sprinkler. You can actually see the sunspots if you look at the sun through a welding mask (or project a scope image onto a card to view).

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240511.html

[Ianab]

Lil's phone will automatically take a series of pictures from the same location and stitch them into one panorama. This would be near a 180 deg view from another spot we stopped at.

[firefighter ontheside]

I knew they may be visible last night.  We read that 1am to 4am would be best time.  I told Cindy I would be in bed.  Well, last night we decided to do a little catfishing at about 8pm.  At 9 I noticed the pink glow in the sky.  I took a picture to see what would happen.  I was amazed at the results.  Only lasted about 20 minutes where I was, but its the only time I have seen the Aurora south of Canada.