Phenomenal aurora australis thrills observers across southern coastline

March 27, 2024 7:48 AM

Phenomenal aurora australis thrills observers across southern coastline. A camera is often required to get a glimpse of the southern lights, but the display recently was so powerful it could be seen with the naked eye.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (9 comments total)

I've only seen the aurora borealis once, as a child, and it's still a vivid memory. It's so colorful and so huge and so animated.
posted by Wilbefort at 7:58 AM on March 27

I have a general question about either aurora (borealis or australis), for anyone who's seen them in person; how fast does it move?

So many of the videos I've seen seem to speed up the video, so it's waving all over the place like crazy - and I can't seem to find a video that shows the aurora in real time, so I have no idea what the actual thing really looks like.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:18 AM on March 27

IIRC, parts move slow, and other parts ripple and move fast.
posted by Windopaene at 8:51 AM on March 27

I saw the aurora borealis as pillars of light dancing on the north end of a lake... in the northern lower peninsula of Michigan. It was interesting, weird, and fascinating.

More weird, the aurora came down to SE lower Michigan once (~2011), and rendered the night sky a dark crimson red (vs the dark sky blue you'd usually see). I thought it was halogen lighting bouncing off of clouds, but I could see stars.

Good to read the southern hemisphere got to experience this!
posted by JoeXIII007 at 9:18 AM on March 27

More weird, the aurora came down to SE lower Michigan once (~2011), and rendered the night sky a dark crimson red (vs the dark sky blue you'd usually see). I thought it was halogen lighting bouncing off of clouds, but I could see stars.

One night, sometime in the mid-80s or so, we were driving home on a highway in central freaking Indiana. To the north, we saw this eerie bright red glow on the horizon. At first, we thought it had to be a big fire somewhere, but given how large it was, it would have had to be an entire town burning. Then, we noticed the glow was moving, waving, and we suddenly realized it was the aurora! We pulled over and watched the show for awhile until it started to subside. It remains the only time in my life I ever saw the aurora.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:33 AM on March 27 [3 favorites]

What Windowpaene said. There was a remarkable auroral storm when I was living on the west slope of Queen Anne Hill in Seattle in the Aughties around 2001-2004. I have seen aurora over Seattle about three times. That one was the superdoozy. There was a green glow of green across the northern horizon and rippling curtains of white overhead. Every so often a stream of white would gush overhead like those streaks you see on telestrators at football games when people draw lines to follow a pass.

And most amazing of all, there were shimmering semi-circular flashes of light that brought to mind a drawn bow. They would flash flash flash across the sky, flash and fade in succession overhead. My understanding was those were arc auroras and they are the rarest of all.

I grew up in a small town in Idaho where I could see the Milky Way at night in our backyard back in the days before mercury vapor streetlights. I have seen some aurorae. One storm was in 1958 back during the International Geophysical Year -- another solar maximum -- which was like a glowing peach cloud extending overhead to the zenith -- I never saw anything like it until I saw a cloudy night over downtown Seattle. And... We could hear a faint sounds like distant thunder. I kid you not.

But I never saw auroras like that night in West Seattle. Rippling curtains, gushing streams and the flash! flash! flashing arcs. Those arcs just blew my mind.

And the funny thing is I was inside half asleep with Nevada the Spanky Cat on the futon listening to Art Bell on Coast to Coast AM. When I heard him mention auroras, I shot out the door to see the celestial fireworks. Best. Auroras. Ever. in my experience. That storm actually knocked some geosynchronous transmitting satellite antennas out of alignment. I can't even imagine what it must have looked like out west in say, Roslyn or Duvall, let alone the rural boonies of Eastern Washington.
posted by y2karl at 10:17 AM on March 27

One of my favorite subjects! I have the fortune to currently live in the cold far north and have been a bit obsessed with taking my camera gear and hunting them down this winter. I finally traveled even farther north in January (to Kiruna, Sweden) and went out every night for a week. Clouds foiled me night after night, but then the last night before I had to leave I finally got crisp, cold (-20C), but most importantly clear weather. Amazing and totally worth the effort! Mostly colorless to the naked eye with a hint of green, but incredibly vivid in the photos I was able to get. Being in a remote area with extremely dark (Bortle 2) skies made it even better. I was giddy for a week afterwards, and am already considering another hunt next winter, honestly I was just having a blast the entire time.

I tried closer to home this past weekend when there was a particularly strong solar storm, but clouds foiled me again sadly. I think a lot of folks don't realize that it's not a nightly phenomenon even for people in the far, far north. Just getting truly dark, clear skies can be a real gamble. I have a colleague in Tromsø and they said they only get the truly amazing light-up-the-whole-sky displays a few times a year. Rest of the time they're not strong enough or clouds get in the way.

I have a general question about either aurora (borealis or australis), for anyone who's seen them in person; how fast does it move?

It varies! I definitely noticed movement, but it was a fairly slow flowing motion. Sometimes it shimmers or moves faster though from what I've been told. This is a decent video I found a while back from a tour group in Tromsø, skip to 4:20 to see the lights themselves. Most of the video in this one is real-time, no speeding up.
posted by photo guy at 11:46 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]

I have only seen them twice...

Both in the midst of experiences.

Probably mid-late 70s. Lying in the backseat of a mid-late 70's station wagon. Being taken to the nearest ER from the summer camp I was attending, to remove a part of a treble hook that was embedded in my leg, when on the way, they pulled over and we watched them for a while. So awesome...

And then up on the north shore of Lake Superior back in the mid 80's...

All the shimmering curtains... Physics are crazy...

(Chemistry as well, but I digress...)
posted by Windopaene at 11:55 AM on March 27

I was so bummed.. I live in a place that is, hmmm.. aurora adjacent, shall we say?

That is, the usual oval of activity for the aurora borealis doesn't extend quite to where I live but when the Kp value rises above moderate the active region generally extends to cover this area. However, the bigger problem is that I am in coastal temperate rainforest and clear skies are rare, especially during the dark nights of winter.

We recently had about 10 days of unseasonable clear weather and I was loving being able to see the stars for a change. I heard about the CME and was very excited that we might get some really good aurora but, alas, after more than a week of flawless sky-viewing weather, things clouded over completely about half an hour after dark on the night the solar storm was expected to hit. Foiled again!

Well, it's not as though I don't get treated to some amazing views around here all the damn time, but, hey, I'm greedy. I wanted all that and aurora, too. Congrats to anyone who did get good viewing for the recent event.
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:25 PM on March 27