Aurora Prospects 2014

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.

Rikand

is the spot just too big to produce cme's ?

maquiladora

Rikand wrote: »

is the spot just too big to produce cme's ?

Large sunspots are known to produce large flares but not every flare produces a CME. As we've seen. :mad:

Elmer Blooker

Solar activity intensifying again, something to keep an eye on but shame about the full moon though.
http://spaceweather.com/

Hal1

There could be more xflares soon. This one occurred yesterday evening and produced a cme, but with little impact.

Solarham.net wrote:

Solar activity is once again at high levels. Region 2205 produced a strong X1.6 solar flare peaking at 17:26 UTC Friday. The event was associated with a Type II radio emission with an estimated velocity of 602 km/s. A short lived R2 radio black occurred on the sunlit side of Earth. The flare generated a coronal mass ejection (CME) that appears to be directed to the north and east. Little to no impact to our geomagnetic field is expected.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8UtAXWke7w

Hal1

Update:

Solarham.net wrote:

A moderate G2 geomagnetic storm watch has been issued for November 10th. The watch was added as a result of the X1.6 flare and CME event from Friday. When watching the attached video below courtesy of LASCO C2 and C3, you can clearly see that a bulk of plasma is traveling to the north and east and away from our planet. Despite this, sky watchers at high latitudes should remain alert. I do not personally expect G2 storm conditions to materialize, but then again, we have been surprised in the past.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybr3VTxVLdA

November 10, 6 (G2)
Max Kp, Prob-M 20%
Prob-H 50%

lolie

Most of that cme was directed away from earth so i'd be surprised if we see any lights from it.
Any cme's in the next few days should be headed our way.
Flare risk from 2205, M 70% X 30%.
After the big sunspot few weeks ago produced 6 X and at least a 12 M flares but no cme's were due a break.

Rikand

hope we dont get any CME's for the next 2 weeks.

Heading away on me holliers and I won't be in a region where Northern Lights are possible to see