Tag Archives: Northern Lights

The Northern Lights shine above the frozen surface of Lake Superior on the west coast of the Keweenaw Peninusla in a 10 shot panorama captured over the space of three hours at the start of this month. To wit:

 At left, a faint band of Zodiacal light rises sharply from the horizon crossing Mars and the Pleides star cluster. Both the distant galaxy M31 and our own Milky Way shine above the greenish auroral arc. Navigational north pole star Polaris is centered above and accompanied on the right by the northern night’s most recognizable asterism, the Big Dipper. Terrestrial lights include markers for two breakwaters on the the horizon near the center of the scene.

Full resolution image here.

(Image: Lorenzo Ranieri Tenti)

apod

Includes Aurora, Venus, Pleiades, and yer man from The Stone Roses.

Brian Wilson writes:

I’ve had some time to put together a time-lapse of some Aurora shots taken 27th of March 2012. Taken from Co. Mayo. It consists of about 140, 30-second exposures condensed to approx 50 seconds. There was lots of activity in the cloudless sky that night with two vivid outbursts from the Northern Light. The clip ends with a view of the Aurora, Venus, Pleiades and a Crescent Moon casting reflections on the North Atlantic! All with a top tune from Ian Brown!

 

From Astronomy Ireland

Yesterday (Thursday) afternoon, a coronal mass ejection (CME) and a class-M solar flare erupted from the Sun, sending material almost directly towards Earth. This cloud of charged material is expected to arrive at Earth on Saturday night at roughly 10:30pm, but conditions within the cloud and in space can possibly alter this by a number of hours.

When it arrives, there is a small chance that the aurora borealis (northern lights) will be visible from Ireland. We suggest keeping an eye on the northern sky from 6pm on Saturday evening and throughout the night, into Sunday morning. If it appears, the aurora will have a green and/or red colour, most likely just over the northern horizon.

Ideally it is best to watch the aurorae from a location as far north as possible, but depending on the strength of the CME from the Sun, they can be visible further south. We recommend picking anywhere that has a dark sky with a clear northern horizon.

It’s because of a “coronal mass ejection” from the sun.

Sun has obviously been reading the ‘How To Shit’ post.

Astronomy Ireland