Aurora Prospects 2014

John.Icy

Absolute nonsense for the media to only jump on it TODAY when the main event was most likely last night.

But I won't rule out anything, if the IMF goes back south the KP could creep back up.

mdogg88

hi I'm in the kildare area, what are the chances of getting a look at the aurora tonight? should I go to the coast for a better chance of seeing them?

Rikand

mdogg88 wrote: »

hi I'm in the kildare area, what are the chances of getting a look at the aurora tonight? should I go to the coast for a better chance of seeing them?

If the clouds clear up to the top of dunmurray hill could be decent if your in that area

lolie

Unfortunately as things stand theres no hope of seeing aurora anywhere in Ireland tonight
As ever there's a chance things could pick up but at the minute that chance is very slim.
So for people planning on heading north unless north is Norway then it looks like it's a wasted journey.

Rikand

lolie wrote: »

Unfortunately as things stand theres no hope of seeing aurora anywhere in Ireland tonight
As ever there's a chance things could pick up but at the minute that chance is very slim.
So for people planning on heading north unless north is Norway then it looks like it's a wasted journey.

The Winter is young!

Alanstrainor

All I got was a car driving past, and the ****e scared out of me when a deer can up behind me!

irishbarb

It was visible last night in Clare. First time ever seeing it, I read that there was a chance last night so I went out for a look and saw what look like faint white ripples that came and went. Wouldn't have really noticed it if I wasn't looking. That was around half nine. Went for a look at 12am again to see if it would look any clearer/more colourful but I couldn't see anything at all after that. Still cool to see though

PixelTrawler

At KP2 last night there was no way you saw Aurora from Ireland last night. Also they would not have been white. You'd need kp 8 probably from Clare.

This shows roughly the kp values (strength of the storm) and where aurora would be visible.

http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/Aurora/globeNE.gif

fits

PixelTrawler wrote: »

. Also they would not have been white. You'd need kp 8 probably from Clare.
]

When it is very faint it can look white, like clouds. Shows up faint green then in photographs. But agree that it probably wasn't seen last night from Clare. 9.30pm too close to sunset also.

electrobanana

Quick question lads im in the Shetland islands will i be visible here i might take a drive up north away from lights to get a good view??

fits

Nothing much doing right now for Shetland, or anywhere else really.

Calibos

fits wrote: »

When it is very faint it can look white, like clouds. Shows up faint green then in photographs. But agree that it probably wasn't seen last night from Clare. 9.30pm too close to sunset also.

Maybe they saw noctilucent clouds.

fits

Calibos wrote: »

Maybe they saw noctilucent clouds.

that's what I would think

jfSDAS

Not noctilucent cloud either ... it's way too late in the season to catch them from here.

I'd suspect it was high cirrus or possibly aircraft contrails that were seen. I saw a lot of persistent and broad contrails the last couple of days due to the weather system over Ireland at the moment.

There was a little bit of discussion over on the Astronomy forum about the aurora predictions for Saturday night. As I mentioned there, it is extremely disappointing that the facts either being fed to the media, or the media themselves, are distorting the reality of what will be seen by people whether it's aurora, comets, or space stations flying over.

I am seriously considering writing to a number of the media outlets to highlight the astronomy events even in this last year or so that have been somewhat sensationalised and are factually lacking.

To be honest, I think people must feel there is a lot of disinformation being peddled about celestial events worth looking out for. To be fair, it is getting a lot of people looking up but you only have to look back over this and other threads to see where events have been hyped up to high heaven at times on the part of the media.

John

irishbarb

Do noticulent clouds ripple around the sky really quickly? Whatever I saw was on and just about the horizon, very faint white, would be visible for a few seconds rippling around and then I wouldn't be able to see it for about 30 seconds to a minute before I'd catch it again. If I wasn't looking for it I wouldn't even notice it. I was actually wrong about the time too so I was told, it was more like half 10 and was pitch black. I watched for about 15 minutes.

dexter647

You definitely seen a faint aurora in my opinion and not noctilucent clouds as it's to late in the season for them...I to experienced what you described about 15 years back on the way back from a gig in clonmel...Very faint white pulses in the sky that shimmered in and out, and if you were not looking for them it would have very easily gone unnoticed..Good spot:)

V_Moth

I would be a bit sceptical. At the moment the only likely place to see the Aurora would be Iceland (would need orange-red over IRL to see):

Meteorite58

Just wondering irishbarb if what you saw might have been the light from a lighthouse in the distance if you were looking towards the coast, would be interesting to plot your line of sight to see if there was a lighthouse on it. If there was it would have a sequence ( e.g. 1 long 3 short )that may correspond with the way you saw the light.

Just another theory.

John.Icy

Yeah you'd need to be in Norway to see something at KP2 people. The aurora oval was so weak till at least midnight or after, was checking up until I went to bed and nothing.

I'd go with some floating high whispy cloud. I saw what people are describing and it even fooled my sister, she said they were dancing but when I really focused on them, there was little to no movement. Eyes can play tricks on us, especially in the dark. Also these white sheets we saw were directly overheard. You'd near a KP of 8/9 to see aurora activity overhead in Kildare.

I'm not an expert but at KP of 2, it's surely impossible. If not, sure we'd be seeing auroras what, 15+ times a year?

EDIT: just going by what I know here of seeing them. I'm sure if an expert could provide some insight it'd be great, but I'm in the no camp right now.

Joe Doe

Most likely it was just those very high whisky clouds, and the usual off-loading of chem-trails from crossing airliners picking up a bit of moon light.

There are however some pics up on bbcni from the other night here.
Though take into consideration these are likely enthusiasts using pro/semi-pro's D3's and full-frame Canons on a sturdy tripod.
Probably also to be fired off using cable release/infrared and the optimum combination time/aperature/iso setting to pull in all and any available colour.
I can make a pitch black midnight forest pop up like a summer's day with the right settings, on-board system auto fix (pre-photoshop).

Chris_5339762

.raw mode too on most of those pictures, which allows you to play around with exposure and dark/light areas plus colour a whole lot more.

fits

There might be another chance tomorrow/Thursday, another CME headed this way apparently, but not expected to be as strong.

irishbarb

fits wrote: »

There might be another chance tomorrow/Thursday, another CME headed this way apparently, but not expected to be as strong.

If it's as extremely clear of a night as the last night I'll go out and see if I can see what I saw again. I'm convinced I did, it was moving around way too fast and vast to be clouds.

fits

irishbarb wrote: »

If it's as extremely clear of a night as the last night I'll go out and see if I can see what I saw again. I'm convinced I did, it was moving around way too fast and vast to be clouds.

Take long exposure photos if you want to be sure.

fits

fits wrote: »

Take long exposure photos if you want to be sure.

by the way the lights don't move that fast. At their best they can shimmer like curtains and fade in and out.

thecretinhop

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/sun-s-pending-magnetic-flip-has-physicists-on-edge-1.2418621

very good article on it the sun changes magnetism every 13 years?!? WowI am hoping to see something...of to Canada next week, going to parts of British Columbia
:eek:

Joe Doe

If you're landing in the VC area of BC, may need to mosey on up a bit, towards Alaska, as they're only a balmy 49.2500° N, even though it's still Candaka like.
Hopefully Mr.Sun won't recreate that Revolution TV series, well until everyone has extracted the joy of playing around with ios8 on their new Iphone6Max's.

lolie

fits wrote: »

There might be another chance tomorrow/Thursday, another CME headed this way apparently, but not expected to be as strong.

A cme from a filament eruption on Saturday. It's expected to be a weak enough hit but maybe it could suprise us.


As for the aurora been seen in Clare Saturday night, with the KP of 2 max and the magnetic field pointed north it would make it impossible to see aurora in Ireland.

Rikand

Joe Doe wrote: »

If you're landing in the VC area of BC, may need to mosey on up a bit, towards Alaska, as they're only a balmy 49.2500° N, even though it's still Candaka like.

Magnetic north pole drops their chances of seeing aurora at that latitude quite a bit though, doesnt it ?

lolie

Rikand wrote: »

Magnetic north pole drops their chances of seeing aurora at that latitude quite a bit though, doesnt it ?

Surely you mean it increases their chances of seeing it?

thecretinhop

Thanks for help guys going to jasper and Banff, might not be far enough but will have camera at the ready just in case!

Rikand

lolie wrote: »

Surely you mean it increases their chances of seeing it?

yes I meant increases, lol.

I was trying to write that it drops the the aurora down to lower latitudes but must have got mixed up half way through the post, lol

Elmer Blooker

I saw the aurora at around 3am Saturday morning in Wexford despite all the cirrus and moonlight, I'm not making it up, why would I?
I've seen aurorae lots of times and I knew exactly what I was looking for and I saw it directly overhead in a gap between the cirrus, it was white and fan shaped but I just knew by looking at it that it was much higher than cirrus. It could easily have been mistaken for cirrus but my experienced eye knew what it was. I know cirrus when I see it. Someone who was with me who isn't really interested in these sort of things described it as "stripes in the sky" when I pointed it out to them.
I think most people make the mistake of looking for brilliant red and green colours when aurora watching but I know from experience its almost always white when I've witnessed it (Oct and Nov 2003 were exceptions)
A lot more people would have seen it if it wasn't for the moon and cirrus.

fits

It was at its peak around then though. It had waned completely by the time other poster saw it in Clare.

lolie

Lovely aurora seen from northern sweden at the minute.
Maybe we'll see it like this some night.

RoisinD

irishbarb wrote: »

If it's as extremely clear of a night as the last night I'll go out and see if I can see what I saw again. I'm convinced I did, it was moving around way too fast and vast to be clouds.

Just catching up with this. Note that you are in Clare. What part? Near enough to North/North West? What you saw were whitish lights moving over and back across the sky? They were laser lights which are being used in Lisdoonvarna.

maquiladora

Sunspot group 2192 is massive, the largest since 1989. It's now earth-facing and capable of producing large X-flares.

Hal1

Yeah but no cme from either xflares. It is a monster though and hopefully will produce a strong earth facing cme.

Huge pic here: https://maximusphotography.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/pete-20-oct-color.jpg

maquiladora

Hal1 wrote: »

Yeah but no cme from either xflares. It is a monster though and hopefully will produce a strong earth facing cme.

Huge pic here: https://maximusphotography.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/pete-20-oct-color.jpg

As long as it's not too strong! We had a near miss in 2012...

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm/

Rikand

maquiladora wrote: »

As long as it's not too strong! We had a near miss in 2012...

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm/

Yeah.... let's not have one of those....

Dont think I could survive without boards.ie for an extended period of time

Popoutman

It's a beautiful sunspot. I got to see a few of the M-class flares with my h-alpha PST solar scope in the past few days, thanks to timely emails from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology flare alert email list. I missed the X-class yesterday though, it did look very nice -
That image will probably be archived off by December, they keep about 30 days of images in the public archive.

Very handy free service. Very pretty flares!

maquiladora

Directly facing earth now. 45% chance of an X-class flare forecast today.

Hal1

Another shot here showing the partial eclipse visible over north america.
http://www.solarham.net/archive/cottrell_oct23_2014.jpg

maquiladora

X2.5 flare just happened. If a CME was produced it will probably be earth-directed.

Edit : X3.1. Sixth largest flare of this solar cycle.

maquiladora

2014-10-24 21:41 UTC R3 (Strong) Radio Blackout in progress

We said it remained a threat and here it is, producing another R3 (Strong) Radio Blackout that at the time of this posting, is still on the climb. The event began at 5:07pm EDT (2107 UTC) and is still going strong over 30 minutes later. The main communications impacts from this event are over the Pacific Ocean. In the meantime, forecasters remain vigilant to see if there is an associated coronal mass ejection. As we learn more about this event we will update this space.

The One Doctor

Well, that's humanity back to the dark ages.

maquiladora

It looks like no CME was produced, so no aurora.

mountainy man

Ah poo!

lolie

We just can't catch a break, what's the bets when it turns away from earth there'll be plenty of cme's from it.

Another X flare ongoing at the minute.
http://www.solarham.net/xray.htm

maquiladora

lolie wrote: »

We just can't catch a break, what's the bets when it turns away from earth there'll be plenty of cme's from it.

Another X flare ongoing at the minute.
http://www.solarham.net/xray.htm

No CME from that flare either. Despite the huge size of the active region the flares coming from it don't seem to be very eruptive.