NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2014 Jan 8, 17:40 -0800
There is a good chance for "northern lights" tonight, visible especially in North America and possibly extending to mid-latitudes. The storm is expected to begin with a bang sometime around 0800 UT (3am EST) and should continue for a couple of hours. There is a neat animation of a computer model of all of this from an omniscient viewpoint here:
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/wsa-enlil/
I'm including a screen capture.
I'm sure there are some NavList members who've never seen the northern lights, so please understand, you need to get away from city lights. It's not fireworks. If you can't see the Milky Way at all from your backyard, then you probably won't be able to see the aurorae either. They CAN be brighter, even dramatically brighter, than the Milky Way, but that's rare. The patterns shimmer and move on a time scale of tens of seconds to several minutes. A good show is a lot of fun.
Obviously, it's a nuisance getting all dressed up for the cold, if there's nothing to see. Since I'm on a "night owl" schedule right now, I will be posting an update on Facebook live by 4am EST or earlier if there's anything worth the pain of getting out of bed (https://www.facebook.com/FrankEReed), and if it's really good, I will try to post a NavList message. No message means "no show, go back to sleep".
-FER
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