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Four images through my window.
I heard there were aurora last night, so at about 4am I took some very shaky photos. I think the pale whitish dots near the top of the photos was a star or planet that left a trail. The yellow colour was a neighbour’s lights.
I don’t have a tripod and as I have Parkinsons disease I can’t hold the camera still. So this is propped up on a pillow, 1 minute exposure. Sorry they are so blurred.
Bright auroras all over the UK. But they happened earlier and I seem to have missed them. When I did go out round the back of the house the sky looked normal. So I looked north at the front of my house. But I could only see a green glow through the factory lights. My Parkinsons camera shake was as bad as ever and I was shivering. So I totally apologise for this awful picture!
Space Weather News for Oct. 9, 2024
https://spaceweather.com
https://www.spaceweatheralerts.com
SEVERE GEOMAGNETIC STORM WATCH: An X-class solar flare on Oct. 8th hurled a fast-moving CME directly toward Earth. NOAA and NASA models agree that it could arrive as early as Oct. 10th, with NOAA forecasters warning of a possibly severe geomagnetic storm. Full story @ Spaceweather.com.
Two big solar flares have recently flung energetic plasma out into space from the sun over the last couple of days. The radiation released arrived at earth quickly and blacked out some of our short wave radio signals, but matter can take days to arrive. So this weekend there may be another aurora show then. I’m getting my camera ready! I just hope it’s not cloudy..
Auroras again. Last night at 2am. Looking West. This is a 60 second exposure taken on my phone camera which stacks images when my phone is set on night exposure. Midlands in England. How can I be so lucky? Never seen them until this year.
How did I know it was happening? I saw the weather forecast again so I decided to look out at midnight, but that photo was mainly blue with grey white splodges. So it was overcast. Then when I looked again just before bed the sky was darker and something seemed to be happening so I took a few photos ( I can’t explain how dim it was and I basically just risked taking a picture.) the main problem is trying to keep the camera still by leaning against something as my Parkinsons is getting more shaky
View from the north Midlands of England.
Just looked out of the backdoor, almost midnight and I could see a star so it’s clear but looked odd so I took some 60 second layered Night photos and the northern lights are vaguely visible again. Looking West up the hill over the roofs. It’s shaky because of my tremors.
With my sister. We went outside looking for auroras. A lot of people living nearby had taken photos and posted them on Facebook. The sky just looked a bit cloudy to me, but a friend said she thought the sky just looked a bit odd until she took a long exposure. So I set my camera on night with a wide apature and it stacked pictures for 60 seconds. I shake too much so had to try and find a position to hold the camera still, hence the blurry shots. I ended up shoving my right hand against the door jamb and just pushing the button with my left, shaky hand. On the last one I caught greenish streaks. My sister took a couple of these. No real structure but proof you can see aurora even in the city with a long enough exposure! One off the bucket list!
Tuesdays #bandofsketchers prompt was Sky. I’ve always wanted to see the aurora borealis (northern lights). Apparently it’s been visible in the UK recently but as usual it was cloudy here. So here’s my imagined, finger painting in Artrage.
My digital doodle of the northern lights. A couple of days ago the sun threw off a medium sized Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). A plume of hot plasma which the Sun throws out every few days into space. This time it was a halo CME which was pointing directly at us on Earth.
The Sun releases plasma and radiation which can cause effects like auroras on Earth. Streams of electrons and ionised gas travel down the magnetic lines of force that surround the Earth in a protective layer. They hit out atmosphere and glow different colours depending on what atoms they excite.
Yesterday aurora were seen quite far down the longitude of the Northern hemisphere. It might happen again tonight. The sky glowed. I don’t live far enough north to be able to see it. One day I hope I do.
Most of this is written from memory after reading about the Northern lights. If you want more information please check out relevant websites like spaceweather.com
“And what is Life?—An hour-glass on the run,
A mist retreating from the morning sun,
A busy, bustling, still repeated dream;
Its length?—A minute’s pause, a moment’s thought;
And happiness?—A bubble on the stream,
That in the act of seizing shrinks to nought.”
[From ‘What is Life?’ (1820) by John Clare]
I just read this quote and thought about what I would love to see. My friend recently visited Iceland and was lucky to see the aurora borealis. I decided to try and draw it since I haven’t had the opportunity to see one. I was surprised to find out they can be colours other than green which is caused by Nitrogen ions in the atmosphere. The pink is from Oxygen.
The magnetic North Pole of the Earth is drifting towards the actual North Pole at several kilometers a year. There is speculation about what is causing this. But as the Earth’s has a molten iron core it causes a magnetic feild generated by the movement of the Iron. The earth’s magnetic feild may flip (it has before) and so the aurora may drift further south.
The magnetic feild lines emerge from the poles like a bar magnet. This is where the Earth’s magnetosphere is at its weakest and the solar wind, which is made up of charged particles, comes down the magnetic lines and causes the gases in atmosphere to glow.
I wish I had more knowledge about it and I hope one day I will see it.
Mallaband-Brown