And the Northern lights commenced to glo w

“<creak creak creak creak>”

“Audible aurora?

Some say they've heard it. Some say there's no way to hear it. It appears that you can definitely pick up something with an ELF/VLF receiver at times...”

“Tilt, is astronomy a hobby? Or your work? sign me, just curious...”

“Just a hobby!

Officially, I'm one of those mad computer scientists.

I did do an internship learning a little Unix programming at NASA in Greenbelt Maryland a few years ago, which was Extremely Large Fun... Code 913, the Climate and Radiation Branch at Goddard (solar radiation -- as it effects climate, etc).

You know all those Damn Commie Scientists that study Global Warming, the Ozone Hole and all the Treehugger Stuff? Those are the guys, LOL”

“Pretty cool, Tilt”

“Yaz, I'm strictly an Amateur Space Cadet, LOL


I always got a kick out of the name Elvis Costello chose for his outfit... "Keepitasahobby Records".”

“Right! I'm also reminded of Ed Norton with his Captain Video helmet on...”

“When can we go!!”

“I understand the equinoxes are ripe times for good viewing of the Aurora”

“I seem to recall that Winter is better just because it's Dark longer... And though we've passed the maximum, we're only Just past it by a year or so. I've also heard that the chances of seeing something are better near local midnight.

Check out the Spaceweather.com site. Right near the top there's a link to sign up for their email alert... they'll let you know when the aurora might happen.”

“Cool site Tilt.We should be there now!It has got to be an awesome site in real life.The lightshow of God.”

“Hey Tilt...

While I think of it, I saw Northern Lights the evening of July 10/11.

Arrived at the Reva Gap forest service campground at Slim Buttes (part of Custer National Forest and around 20 miles west of Buffalo in NW South Dakota) around 11:30. Noticed what I at first thought were clouds to north, but they had a rainbow, arched shape from west to east horizons.

Then I noticed lights started dancing up a bit. Not as bright as I've seen before, but still... definitely Northern Lights.

Was anything predicted, or reported, for that night?”

“Cool! Lemme look.... My source for that kind of thing is the Spaceweather.com site.  There's a place on the upper right where you can subscribe to their email alerts.  There are other services you can subscribe to... for people that need to be alerted for professional reasons... power companies, telecom, etc..."rapid alert customers"... but those can be a bit more costly, < VBG >

Hmmm... the NOAA Space Environment Center has a couple of weekly summaries, but the current ones are for the period Ending July 8. They came out on the 10th.

Look under "SEC Reports and Summaries"... and then under "Weekly"....There are two reports that come out every Tuesday (it would appear).

Weekly Highlights and 27-day Forecast latest

and

"The Weekly" - Preliminary Report and Forecast of Solar Geophysical Data latest

Hopefully, they'll tell us something....... on Tuesday, < G >


The forecasts look like they were expecting something... references to some "isolated moderate activity" and this: "Geomagnetic field activity is expected to be at unsettled to active
levels on 11 July due to a recurrent coronal hole high-speed stream.
Quiet to unsettled conditions are expected during 12 - 17 July."

Looks like there was some activity on the night of July 10/11... http://www.sec.noaa.gov/alerts/archive/archive_01Jul2007.html

There were a couple of alerts starting around midnight UTC (or about 7 pm CDT?) and lasting 2-4 hours(?).... K=4 and K=5.

The K Index.


I've got to get my butt further north and see those buggers one of these days!!”