Auora alert!

[li'l john]

A rare clear sky down here in Dorset last night (2nd) no aurora but I had to finish before 21.00 as I had to get up early, maybe later??

[Pakmoto]

What's the chances of a sighting tonight?

Or was the impact of the CME limited to yesterday.

[Celeste]

Pah every time we looked out...perfect wall to wall cloud

[Kp6]

I would be surprised to see the aurora reach the south of England. I'm not saying it can't happen, anything could happen, but severe geo-storms from coronal holes are a rarity. It would take a severe disruption for activity to reach the south coast.

The aurora would have been visible in Yorkshire and Cumbria late on the 1st of March, that is as far south as it's managed to reach so far. That particular magnetic disruption was down to a compression of the solar wind travelling in front of the coronal hole wind stream.

Right now it looks like we are under the influence of the coronal hole stream, the solar wind is travelling well above 600km/s. There might still be viewing opportunities if earth's magnetic field 'opens the door' so to speak, at the moment, the latch is on and it's bolted shut.

However what I would say to anyone in the south of England is to not get your hopes up.

[steve2310]

I was fortunate to see the Auora myself a few weeks ago. Being lucky enough to live by the sea in North East Kent, I normally go out for an evening walk a few times a week especially being a new stargazer. Whilst walking along the prom, peering towards the heavens, suddenly the sky was lit up with radiant greens and tinges of yellow for about 7 seconds or so. It was truly magnificent and so unexpected!

If you get a chance to get out and have a look and lucks on your side - it really is an amazing sight. The guy I work with was pretty upset as he had ventured to Finland only a few years ago in order to see them!

Clear skies!!

[AndyUK]

I spent an hour setting up a first light imaging run of my first narrowband filter, I was busy struggling to focus on a star when I look up to see why I can't see it and wham - almost complete cloud cover.

It's that thin, nasty, misty stuff that's almost completely opaque. Grrrr

Same experience for me in Bath, Mike - 20:25 I had subject focused and framed, guidecam set and 5mins into 1st frame noticed the brightness level dropping... Looked up and, as you say, "thin, nasty, misty stuff that's almost completely opaque". Gods not with us last night for sure (would love to see an Aurora!)

[Altair40]

I hope to be out for a look at a few other items tonight - probably too late for this event but will keep eyes peeled in Durham, Co Durham.

Very oddly, not too much LP where I am. I should add this to my general list of things to be aware of happening occasionally and at random.

As a total aside but still to do with Coronal Mass Ejections and Solar Flares I was thinking of how you build a detector at home for warning of possible Aurora sightings. Probably, I can't but I will share this: I used to be an electron microscopist using mainly SEM with EDX or basically an x-ray detector. We were on the top floor of a four story building.

Very occasionally the detector would go absolutely crackers in terms of dead time to those who are aware of this sort of thing - it was used to detect x-rays in the region of 0.1 to 20 kV to identify elements in my specimens.

Whatever those events were I don't think they were anything to do with the microscope electronics or power supply. We had enough of those but that's another story not relevant.

Whatever it was went through two inches of aluminium to get to the detector and it was always one event, then back to normal. Maybe one event per couple of months.

I put it down to a gamma frequency cosmic ray...

You are welcome to 'shoot me down'...

[Altair40]

I hope to be out for a look at a few other items tonight - probably too late for this event but will keep eyes peeled in Durham, Co Durham.

Very oddly, not too much LP where I am. I should add this to my general list of things to be aware of happening occasionally and at random.

As a total aside but still to do with Coronal Mass Ejections and Solar Flares I was thinking of how you build a detector at home for warning of possible Aurora sightings. Probably, I can't but I will share this: I used to be an electron microscopist using mainly SEM with EDX or basically an x-ray detector. We were on the top floor of a four story building.

Very occasionally the detector would go absolutely crackers in terms of dead time to those who are aware of this sort of thing - it was used to detect x-rays in the region of 0.1 to 20 kV to identify elements in my specimens.

Whatever those events were I don't think they were anything to do with the microscope electronics or power supply. We had enough of those but that's another story not relevant.

Whatever it was went through two inches of aluminium to get to the detector and it was always one event, then back to normal. Maybe one event per couple of months.

I put it down to a gamma frequency cosmic ray...

You are welcome to 'shoot me down'...

[glowjet]

Only the ISS seen last night over N. Yorkshir.

[callump]

I'm not sure where the SPA got this prediction from - none of space weather, aurorawatch, bbc, had any sort of significant forecast for last night.

For me in the south (Gloucestershire), if the aurorawatch magnetometer goes bannanas its time to look out - and now they alert on twitter its even easier to be aware.

I think the SPA alert was over optimistic at best, and soon people will start suffering from 'cry wolf' syndrome.

Callum

[saturn5]

I'm not sure where the SPA got this prediction from - none of space weather, aurorawatch, bbc, had any sort of significant forecast for last night.

For me in the south (Gloucestershire), if the aurorawatch magnetometer goes bannanas its time to look out - and now they alert on twitter its even easier to be aware.

I think the SPA alert was over optimistic at best, and soon people will start suffering from 'cry wolf' syndrome.

Callum

Have to agree,i thought it was a strange and very over optimistic forecast,like you say,none of the main predictors gave any indication of anything other than KP 3 which is just enough for me to see a faint glow on the horizon from the very top of the Scottish Mainland.

At its peak the previous night it was a maximum of 6 and weakened to

4 after midnight.

Sudden and short outbursts which are not predicted have happened before but to alert people in the south of England that there may be a chance of a display did nothing more than dissapoint a lot of people.

This website shows you where the aurora oval is and also how far south a display can be seen from.Remember to refresh the page if you change the map.Also space weather.com is never far of the mark.

http://www.gedds.alaska.edu/auroraforecast/