Northern & Australis Lights (aurora borealis)

Voyageur

Ambassador
Ambassador
FOTCM Member
Came across this rather dated documentary featured on the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) _htpp://www.nfb.ca/film/northern_lights

This short {41 min} documentary examines the phenomenon of the northern lights, aka the aurora borealis. Though scientists have advanced many theories in an attempt to explain it, mysteries still linger. Experience a visual panorama of animated legends and international space launches as indigenous people and scientists offer their perceptions of the wondrous northern lights

I know there are more current videos and articles, yet this one, from 1992, has a variety of inputs from the Inuit to Scandinavian countries and Siberia. It examines some of the folklore as passed on from one generation to another. It also features a number of Russian, Canadian, American and European physicists and other scientists who discuss the phenomenon's nature. The film also introduces some old books that studied weather and oddities concerning aurora's. Here are a couple of examples below:

- Discussed the Russian Scientist, Mikhail Lomonosov, 1711-1765 (_http://www.tristarmedia.com/bestofrussia/scientists.html), who seems a very interesting man, and also the first (or so it says) to make the connection between aurora's and the sun/plasma.

- There were reports that the aurora can be 1000 km or come down to the earths surface, this is also covered in various parts by regional inhabitants who share their experiences and myths/stories.

- Discussion on Birkeland and his currents

- In the video there is discussion amongst the scientists that their instruments cannot hear the Northern Lights, yet people hear them and they cannot explain why the scientists can't - this made me think about the phenomenon of the "trumpets" discussed around the sounds that were being captured from above; more so a year or two ago, that Pierre also wrote about in his book Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection.

- Further along, it discusses the depleting of the Ozone layer related to aurora's (this was discussed in a recent session too). The theory goes that aurora's (incoming) electrons break up 0 and N creating nitric oxide causing Ozone disruption.

- In 1741 there is mention of a Norwegian sea captain who wrote a book about aurora and weather.

- Interestingly, aurora are used to predict when extra ambulances are needed (in Russia) possible because of the fluctuating magnetic field lines and heightened cardiac issues?

- Recounted the March 9th, 1989 Quebec (province wide) cascading power surge event that caused mass power outage - Faraday's law. From the north (like James Bay), the power grid runs a long way down to urban centers and the effects of the aurora enveloped the transmission lines.

- There is a wee message at the end concerning our hostile space and its effects on "electronics", yet perhaps on terra firma it has yet to make a really big mark? Perhaps there is a connection between the recent pull back of the magnetic shield over North America and some future event that may well paralyze parts of the world?
 
Observing Northern Lights was pretty much a nightly thing growing up in Northern Alberta, Canada.
I remember putting my face under my pillow, unable to sleep due to the flickering and strobing of the Northern lights coming through the pulled curtains.

This article has some interesting new observations:
New Discovery of "Dune Aurora"

1580317066121.png

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new type of aurora called “the dunes” discovered by aurora chasers in Finland is helping scientists better understand a mysterious layer of Earth’s atmosphere.

“For the first time we can actually observe atmospheric waves through the aurora – this is something that hasn’t been done before,” said Minna Palmroth, a space physicist at the University of Helsinki and lead author of the new study.

[...]the dunes occur simultaneously and in the same region where the electromagnetic energy from space is transferred to Earth’s upper atmosphere. Palmroth suspects this energy transfer may be linked with the creation of the mesospheric bores through a phenomenon called Joule heating, where electrical currents from charged particles flow through the upper atmosphere and create heat.

The researchers suspect the dunes are visible manifestations of undulations of air called atmospheric waves.

"This region of the atmosphere, roughly 80 to 120 kilometers (50 to 75 miles) about Earth’s surface, is sensitive to changes in energy from the Sun and Earth’s lower atmosphere. Energy fluctuations in this region can indirectly affect the trajectories of Earth-orbiting satellites and spacecraft reentry.

“For the first time we can actually observe atmospheric waves through the aurora – this is something that hasn’t been done before,” said Minna Palmroth, a space physicist at the University of Helsinki and lead author of the new study."
1580318002127.png
The dune-like northern lights occurred at the boundary between the mesopause and mesosphere


This article has some more info, and really cool pictures!
 
Very weak Northern Lights • Stockholm
19 April 2021, 03.00 - Planetary K index 4

Different "Weather"

I woke up at around 03:00 going out to the balcony (checking the weather) - and noticed that there was (perhaps) something... An extreme faint glow... ? I really wasn't sure... It felt as if it did not belong to the possible beginning of dawn. OK. Let's check. I usually make a quick test with the camera, to see if something greenish pops up.

And it did. Barely.

While it looks neat with a glancing bow in the photo - this level of activity was practically invisible to the naked eye - and so easy to overlook. You just can't tell, really.

Personally, I always get a bit excited, simply because I have not seen any Aurora for a very long time. I missed all shows because of sleep, working hours, over common overcast weather... Watching auroras through dirty subway cabin windows, together with all the glare and movement city lights and street lamps... isn't a good option - unless the auroras are extreme bright.

Yes, the image is somewhat enhanced. The stars are sharpened (highlights only) to make them appear clearer. The horizon a bit darkened so that the eye isn't focussing on the buildings too much. The Image noise reduced.

The photo was taken handheld for 2 seconds - but only because one of my cameras can handle that without tripod. The view points towards north.


What I didn't expect

was the late appereance after midnight at 03.07. Normally, Auroras peak around midnight (22:30 to 01:00) when the "Auroral Oval" has reached its most southern expansion over our area. (This rule - applies for any place, but does not apply if there is a serious outbreak in progress - which can happen at any time and the Auroral Oval makes a large expansion) In the lower chart to the right, Stockholm was already well outside of the Green Auroral Oval area this morning.

The so called "Planetary K Index" also was rather weak, at level 4 (hours before midnight) It is possible that it rose higher at around 03.07 when I was looking - but the chart does not reveal that yet (in the time of writing). Index 4 is normally too low for any visibility over Stockholm, so I usually put the threshold at around 5 to look for Auroras.


2021-04-19-03-07-17.jpg

planetary-k-index.jpg
 
The local one could be higher than the estimated planetary. You can check out magnetometer Kiruna, Sweden (gave up to 6):

You are a pearl @mrtn 💕

Thank you for the link !

I am not so good in reading the charts, but it looks like there was a local impulse going on over Sweden during the time in which even over Stockholm got a weak glancing bow appearing. Interesting !

At Spaceweather.com a guy, Todd Salat published this photo (Brooks Range, Alaska), he took yesterday on 18 April 2021... Now we are talking ! 😍

He wrote:

"Dazzling auroras erupt above the Brooks Range of Northern Alaska on April 18, 2021 at 1:03 am. These lights were so bright that I had to dial back my exposure time to a fraction of a second, and they were expanding so quickly that all three shots were taken within a 13-second time span. This is above the Arctic Circle so it’s no longer getting completely dark, but twilight was good enough because these auroras were on fire!"

It must have been an incredible sight !!!

Todd-Salat-Auroras-on-Fire-by-Todd-Salat_1618758625.jpg
 
So, is the place for Aurora...

to post future images or events of and about Northern Lights ?

If I would have known... I would have done it here and not under "What's the weather where you are". Because I thought of... you know, space weather... weather... and was wavering a while... didn't know where to post it elsewhere, so I obviously posted it at the wrong place, which Laura told me that I did.

Ooops. :oops:
 
Yes, XPan, this would be a good place to post anything about auroras.

Remember, the search engine is your friend. ;-) You can always do a search before you post something you haven't posted about before to see if there is already a topic on it.
 
Thank you @Nienna

It is a good reminder, good to repeat.

I do sometimes search for possible existing threads, yet get also confused (lost) over the many results. Nevertheless - I am glad you guys moved my entry into the proper thread. Thank you 💕
 
Unreal beautiful !

At today's Spaceweather.com front page, this image was published, made by MaryBeth Kiczenski on July 10, 2021 @ Munising, MI.

Just wow !

"Some friends and I were out there to shoot the stars with that waterfall," explains Kiczenski. "I was so excited and thrilled when the auroras appeared. They were not easy to see with the naked eye, but clear as day on the back of the camera."

What happened? Unexpectedly, a crack opened in Earth's magnetic field, not for long, only ~30 minutes. The timing was perfect for Kiczenski's trip to the falls. Solar wind rushed through the gap to fuel the display.

MaryBeth-Kiczenski-auroraboat-2048_1625913675.jpg
 
Gorgeous variety of aurora colours photographed on 4th November 2021 by a US meteorologist holidaying in Iceland.

I thought it was worth noting just for the diversity of colours, some, as mentioned in the tweet, considered relatively rare, such as pink.

The tweet above that is from 'Space Weather Physicist' Tamitha Skov, who sometimes does TV work for NASA, explaining what they think causes the variety of colours.




A SpaceWeather article from 2017 describes the apparent increase in pink auroras:

The pink color of the outburst tells us something interesting about the solar wind on Nov. 22nd: it seems to have been unusually penetrating. Most auroras are green-a verdant glow caused by energetic particles from space hitting oxygen atoms 100 km to 300 km above Earth's surface. Pink appears when the energetic particles descend lower than usual, striking nitrogen molecules at the 100 km level and below.

In recent winters, big displays of pink and white auroras have coincided with spotless suns often enough to make observers wonder if there is a connection. If so, more outbursts are in the offing as the sun continues its plunge toward a deep Solar Minimum. Stay tuned for pink!

But not as rare as blue, apparently. Here's a report from 2019.
 
Northern Lights
8 Jan 2022

Spaceweather com writes following:
CIR IMPACT SPARKS BRIGHT AURORAS: A co-rotating interaction region (CIR) hit Earth's magnetic field on Jan. 8th, igniting some of the best Arctic auroras in years. CIRs are transition zones between fast and slow streams of solar wind. They contain shock waves and magnetic fields that often do a good job sparking auroras. CIRs are like miniature CMEs--the next best thing when a genuine solar storm is not available.

Now some really beautiful images taken Rayann Elzein on January 8, 2022 in Utsjoki, Finnish Lapland - and he writes:

What a night in Utsjoki in Finnish Lapland!

This is the night before last of my yearly week long Polar Night & Aurora photography workshop and we didn't get really lucky since we started. Tonight, the sky was clear and the Auroras were crazy! Yes, so crazy that we had to watch them mostly above the southern horizon, and several coronas appeared throughout the night. On several occasions, the red colour was also revealed by the cameras! This was definitely in the top 3 displays of the season, if not the very best! What a night for our group up here near 70°N in Utsjoki, Finnish Lapland!

Rayann-Elzein-2201082327_R5Z_0250_1641688449.jpg
Rayann-Elzein-2201082320_R5Z_0214_1641688449.jpg Rayann-Elzein-2201090210_R5Z_0460_1641688449_lg.jpg
Rayann-Elzein-2201090200_R5Z_0388_1641688449.jpg
 
Northern Lights over Stockholm
15 Jan 2022 00.11

2022-01-15-00-11-49cass.jpg

I drove the subway train

through an utterly empty Stockholm during this weekend (all places are closed after 23:00 due to new restrictions :umm: that's why). When I arrived at the end station of Hagsätra, located in the southern suburbs, having a 15 minute break - opening the cabin door on the darker backside in order to smoke.... something 'smoky' caught my attention, quickly realizing, omg... NORTHERN LIGHTS !!!! 💕

Clearly visible, greenish and rather fast moving / "pulsing" patches of light hanging in the air (albeit not as colorful and bright as in photos) But very clearly visible to the naked eye ! A large green bow stretching more than 90 degrees over the northern horizon... Suddenly I found myself wanting to do three things at the same time; taking photos, smoking a cigarette and calling my husband. Speaking of him - since he is a Sicilian guy... he had never seen Northern Lights before in his life.

Well, you already can guess; he got really excited by the sight !

It is funny, how you within seconds get reconnected to that childish-playful magic rising from within at the sight of auroras. That extra (inspiring) energy which comes from watching natural phenomenas. I felt like a boy in a toyshop, and remembered through that vibration in the now, all the older slides of similar past events in nature... how wonderful it is - every single time - to be alive, to really live.

Watching Auroras, Thunderstorms and Volcanic eruptions, kind of have that effect on me.

By the time I drove into the city, to Gullmarsplan - the Northern Lights had weakened considerably - by 01:00 they had vanished. Apparently they had started in the late evening (which I was unaware of) due to a G-2 geomagentic storm which had emerged because of a crack opening in earth's magnetic field. Auroras have been reported as far south as Germany, according to spaceweather.com

For me personally, this event was the first time since 24 Dec 2014 and 17 March 2015 I have seen brighter Auroras over Stockholm. Therefore it's been a really a long time (I missed several outbreaks, either because it was cloudy, or I was working/sleeping, or didn't pay enough attention).


2022-01-15-00-38-01.jpg

2022-01-15 04-07-02.GIF


Photo Technical stuff:

I only had the iPhone 13 Pro Max with me - but it did pass the test to be capable of producing good images of Auroras (which was one of the main criteria i had in the back of my mind, when i bought it)

Despite not having used any tripod, at exposure time of around 5 to 10 seconds - using a mobile phone for Auroras was something I never envisioned could ever be considered to be any serious.... Yet, you have to enable the proper settings which are needed if you want the quality in the image files (e.g. "Night mode" has to be enabled, as well "Apple ProRAW" - and then the image needs tweaking either in the phone directly after, or even better, later at the computer with a RAW converter such as Adobe Camera RAW plugin in Photoshop). If those iPhone setting are not enabled and you only work with JPG straight off, the quality get's seriously degraded ("very blotchy") in night images with "night mode" enabled.

Notice: that all forms of movements in night photos made with an iPhone of newer generation, generates areas and details with more noise, including auroras (to a lesser degree). That is because Apple isn't really using a genuine full 10 seconds exposure time in one single step - but instead takes 20 images x 0.5 seconds which then are aligned and minced through apple voodoo, into one final RAW file image. If anything moves during the exposure (or you); details / areas then appear a lot noisier and diffuse.

A real camera mounted on a tripod, with genuine full exposure in one go, does not generate such a noisy/choppy/gritty effects in things that move during exposure.
 
While looking in the old newspapers from 1903 to find reports on aurora activity for my Frank Slide post, I came across a tiny, singular report:

June 25, 1903- The Elbert County Tribune, Image 7

The Black Aurora Borealis

“The aurora borealis as lately seen in the early afternoon by an English observer, appeared as a black arch with black streamers against a blue sky. The sun was shining brightly, and some bright white clouds were driven rapidly in front of the auroras.”

This report was reprinted in several American papers but there is no location mentioned. Because it states “English observer,” it sounds like it comes from somewhere in (rural) England.

I then did a general search and found a reprinted report originally from the Fall River Patriot (Massachusetts) on Sep. 10th, 1839. It seems to be mistitled.

October 02, 1839- The North-Carolina Standard, Image 4

A Black Meteor

“Night before last the heavens presented a very unusual appearance. It was a clear star-light, when a black column began to ascend in the south-west and the north-east, directly opposite each other. The one at the south was at first supposed to be a column of smoke, but it soon began to branch off and the streamers shot off and varied their position in the ordinary way, only they were black and so dense as to obscure the stars over which they passed. They stretched away from the opposite columns, so that about ten o’clock in the evening they met in the east. We never before have seen or heard of a black Aurora Borealis.”

The short definition of ‘black aurora’ from WordSense Dictionary:

Black Aurora (pl. black auroras or black aurorae)

A type of aurora that exists at the top of the ionosphere, where electrons flow upward into space (unlike normal aurora, which involve downward flowing electrons), leaving deep cavities in the atmosphere, making blank spaces when regular aurora are seen, hence being "black" or non-luminous, but having the shape of aurora.

For a more detailed explanation with some other helpful diagrams, see: “Cluster Quartet Probes The Secrets of the Black Aurora” and “Northern Lights: How ‘black’ auroras actually work”.

Black Aurora Creation.jpg

Image: From the article “Cluster Quartet Probes The Secrets of the Black Aurora”.


The 1903 report is interesting because it happened during the day. I know I haven’t seen a ribbon of ‘gap’ aurora before. And the 1839 report makes no mention of any of the bright aurora we all know. It appears the report is of a dense ribbon of ‘hole’ travelling across the sky. Creepy.
 
Stockholm Aurora time
13-14 March 2022

The last outbreak in the beginning of march didn't really generate anything over the City of Stockholm - and I don't know why. While inland, people did capture images of Northern Lights... 🤷‍♀️

However last night, Northern lights appeared briefly around 19.00 local Swedish time. Then somewhere around midnight stronger burst appeared covering a lot more of the sky, at time even half of the sky - but very weak (like a greenish haze) which to the naked eye wasn't bright or anything. Some "curtains" remained visible to the naked eye. (Keep in mind with photos like the ones below... they always look brighter and more colorful in photos, compared the naked eye).

It is only when you get really strong auroras, that sight is truly remarkable to the eyes.


First out
a broad panorama stiched together out of 4 vertical images, covering North to East around 00:34. Then they subsided quickly again (00:41), only to appear anew (00:50) and for a very short moment, there were multicolored Auroras visible (01:05, 01:07)

2022-03-14-00-34-40panorama.jpg

2022-03-14-00-41-38susiding.jpg

2022-03-14-00-50-05.jpg


2022-03-14-01-05-32.jpg

2022-03-14-01-07-35.jpg'

aurora-forecast-northern-hemisphere.jpgplanetary-k-index.gif
 
Back
Top Bottom