ALERT-TONIGHT 10/21-Northern LIghts!!!

“Yes, I saw them coming home from work. They looked better maybe 45 minutes ago... BUT they are definitely out there.

I'm in NE Iowa, by the way.

Go see'em yourself!!”

“*GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR*”

“null”

“I never saw northern lights...sniff sniff. I hear theys real purty.”

“I've always wanted to see them. Some day I will. Hope you enjoy the sight lizs. Take pictures if you can.”

“ SRC="http://www.spacew.com/www/currentvis.gif" WIDTH="300" HEIGHT="300">”

“rats.


How about...

”

“These weren't real good. Just kind of a brighter area stretching for a good distance on the horizon. (no, not reflections of city lights......NO cities!! lol)

I'll take it whatever, been awhile since I've seen them. The last display I saw was really excellent. Lights shooting across the sky in fact”

“Light Pollution!

*GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR...*

IDA”

“Tilt, I just checked that www.spacew.com page that was mentioned in your link above. I see some other location in Iowa reported Northern Lights last night. Sounds like pretty much just what I saw: (I'm probably a couple hours north and east of this location). Oh and what does that UTC time amount to?

Location: Adel, IA (N41.00 W094.00)
UTC Date/Time of Observation: 2001/10/11 at 03:00 for 00 hours 15 minutes.
Dimmest Stars Visible: Undetermined
Estimated Intensity of Activity: Low
Elevation angle of activity above horizon: 20 degrees
Types of activity observed: (Discrete Arcs) (Rays)
Light Pollution: None (Dark Sky)
Sky Conditions (cloudy or not): Clear View
Estimated Lunar Interference: None
Comments:
Yellow, green arc above the N horizon about 20 deg. Fairy faint whould also have a beam shoot up occasionally. It
didn't impress my daughter much.”

“That sounds like the very thing! I'll bet there will be a few more good shows this cycle. We're still near Solar Maximum.

UTC ~ Universal Time (aka Greenwich Mean Time, etc)

You're Central, sooo... subtract 6 hours from UTC to get Central Standard Time and then 5 after Daylight Savings Time goes into effect.

I thought I might get a chance to see that bugger while I was in Maine two weeks ago, but noooooo, LOL... aurora alerts before I went and after I got back but not *while* I was far enough north to see anything. There was quite a bit of moonlight anyway...

Murphy's Law was fully in force!

I *did* see a nice big chunk of space trash on re-entry a few years ago. It was like THE Meanest shooting star you ever saw: multicolored and breaking up into hundreds of pieces. I've seen fireballs before but this was altogether different. It looked like the end of the world, *GRIN*.”

“Is UTC based on a 24-hour day? So does that translate to midnight? Or am I waaaaaaaaaaay confused??”

“Yaz, a 24-hour day.

So if it was 03:00 UTC on the 11th...

3 - 6 = (-3)
24 - 3 = 21
21 - 12 = 9

It was 9 PM CST on the 10th.

(and it was observed for 15 minutes, ta-da)”

“ooooops.

That shoulda been minus FIVE hours now and minus SIX after you go on Daylight Savings, *DUR*.

10 PM CST.

Hey! It's Friday!”

“Tilt, you wouldn't happen to be into astronomy would you? I was into it and then put it on hold when my son was born. I've got a daughter coming in 5 weeks. After that I hope to get back into it.”

“Thanks, Tilt. My brain wasn't functioning mathwise. LOL...... So I saw them around 9:30 at the best. Then, when I got home, 20 miles to the south and a good 40 minutes later (had errands to run), they weren't as good!

Karma dude!! lol”

“"If I only hadda brain!"

- That Straw Guy


Yep, I get into Astronomy a bit... enough to be dangerous, as you can see, LOL

It's actually one of the things that put me on the slippery slope to backpacking. I'd be out in the dark somewhere checking out some meteor shower and not want to come home. It was a natural progression from there.”

“... and on the 'Net, you can follow the Astronomy links nearly forever.

This is a keeper for general info on what's going on at any particular time.

And congratulations on your forthcoming midget, *SMILES*! Great things come in small packages...”

“More Time Funnies...

The U.S. Naval Observatory has a bunch of neat stuff, like, different systems of time and some zippy code to compute your Local Sidereal Time.

AtomTimeis a nifty little program to set the clock on your box to an atomic clock.”

“By the way all, I screwed up and that was supposed to be 10/12 in my thread title. (now everyone will be going nuts 10/21 looking for northern lights). DOH!!!”

“I didn't notice. How did you get such a tremendous jump on the SOHO satellite??

Heck! The solar flare won't happen for another 5 or 6 days --- I think the guys at NASA will want to have a talk with you...

*VBG*”

“Actually *embarrassed grin* I meant 10/11!!!! Since it happened Thursday night. Double DOH!”

“OK Lizs, Now they REALLY wanna talk to ya.



Space Weather News for October 19, 2001

http://www.spaceweather.com

Twisted magnetic fields above sunspot 9661 erupted this morning,
unleashing an X-class solar flare and hurling a coronal mass ejection toward Earth. The expanding cloud will likely strike our planet's magnetosphere on October 21st during the peak of the Orionid meteor shower. Sky watchers, especially those living at higher latitudes, could
spot both meteors and auroras this weekend.”

“jaysus morphy, lizs! How did you do dat? Are you Sure it was a typo? You might be a closet prescient.

You really outdid yourself this time... an x-class!?! Wooooo Hoooo!

Reminds me of that aurora Some People saw along with the Perseid shower in August 2000.”

“Orionids... LEONIDS!”

“I AM PSYCHIC!!! Better call my hotline number, 1-800-I-TELL-ALL. hehehe........ So ya wanna know what your sweetie's doing, when the boss might keel over, or if that kid is really yours!?! Call today!!! Northern Lights predictions at no extra charge!!

(hmmmmmm.... I'll have to keep a close eye on my typos after this!!)”

“MY, MY, MY!!! Those people predicting Northern Lights are sure GOOD!! And SO AM I!! heheh

The evening of 10/21 and early morning of 10/22: I saw Northern Lights maybe 15-20 degrees above the horizon. From around midnight till 1:30 a.m. (when they were weakening). They weren't anywhere near spectacular or anything ... just "plain Jane."

BUT STILL!!!

I AM TRULY PSYCHIC!! :-) Yes, anxiously await my next typo for more details on YOUR LIFE!!! Moooooooohahahahahaha!!!”

“Lizs, go to sleep already...it's 3:35am...thought I was the only one up.”

“You`re not the only ones up, so am I!LOL”