Aurora in Scotland

[Davey-T]

From the met office

Dave

[geoflewis]

Also as confirmed by email just received from the BAA Aurora and NLC director....

Aurora Alert
A coronal hole impact started to hit Earth yesterday at 22.00UT 30th January 2019. Wind speeds are now at 520kps as of 22.00 31st January and it has reached a level 6 triggering a G1 storm. I have had sightings between cloud up to 30degrees high. It should be visible to as far south as northern England and could go further, and it has been seen as far south as Dundee.
 

[Skipper Billy]

It was raging!!!  I have seen photos - good ones - from as far south as Cumbria.

 

[maw lod qan]

You spiked my curiosity, so I went to a website to read up on the coronal hole and subsequent CME.

Very interesting, and frightening at the same time. I read about a very large one in the late 1800's that caused the Aurora all the way to Panama.

Burned teletype operators hands while touching their equipment.

One like that now could damage so many transformers that it could take a decade to get the grid back up to normal.

[Demonperformer]

Yes. We think we are so secure with our nice comfortable lives these days. And yet the universe could still throw a few nasties in our direction that would leave us floundering ...

[daz]

7 hours ago, maw lod qan said:

You spiked my curiosity, so I went to a website to read up on the coronal hole and subsequent CME.

Very interesting, and frightening at the same time. I read about a very large one in the late 1800's that caused the Aurora all the way to Panama.

Burned teletype operators hands while touching their equipment.

One like that now could damage so many transformers that it could take a decade to get the grid back up to normal.

That was the one was from a flare observing by Richard Carrington in 1859. He was observing sunspots when he saw the flare erupt, and managed to sketch it before it disappeared. At the time, the magnetic link was not known, and it was this flare and the subsequent impact on earth that sparked (no pun intended!) the scientists of the day to measure the magnetic fields on earth and eventually make the link...

It is thought to have been the most powerful to date, and if that hit today, it would cause chaos - as DP says, we would be floundering!!!

Make for some cracking images though!