Ashtead's Journal: Northern Lights

I've seen the lights! They don't appear very often, but since the sun had a flare yesterday, tonight the aurora borealis showed. And there finally was clear skies, after N (*) days (and nights) of cloud cover...

They were the best northern lights I can remember seeing for a long time too: greenish-blue, looked like some enormous curtains or piles of ribbons, and some of them moved back and forth. Others were paler columns that appeared, moved, and disappeared. Behind it was a lower level glow that persisted throughout.

There are too many street-lights and exterior lights on the houses around here, but there are some darker places just a little north of here. Then there is the big parking lot at Tryvann, but the illumination in the tower up there gets in the way, and the lights in the visitor center or museum or whatever that other building up there is, also are a nuisance. But I know of another parking lot at the edge of the woods, and that proved to be nice and dark and quite a bit closer to home too... By the time I got there, the light-show was over, just the diffuse glow remains, but I know where to go next time.

(*) N being some indefinite, but rather large positive integer.

ooooh

[tuxette]

Lucky you! Hopefully there will be a nice light show over the weekend, when I actually have time to go out and enjoy them ;-)

Re:

[Ashtead]

The sun had another flare or explosion last night, so chances are good. :) We'll just have to hope that the weather cooperates with an absent cloud cover.

some day

[subgeek]

some day i'd like to see the northern lights. i've sat and looked at the skies many nights, but i've never been looking at the right time yet.

Re:

[Ashtead]

While waiting for the opportunity to see it live, here are some pictures [budstikka.no] from various locations around here.

The article is in Norwegian; "Se Nordlyset!" means "See the Northern Lights", and the pictures shown are from Bekkestua, Holmenskjæret, Blakstad, Skui, and Høn.

More pictures:

"Northern Light over Oslo" [aftenposten.no]

The astronaut Christer Fuglesang says he saw it from space [www.vg.no]. No pictures of that however... The picture shown is from Jessheim, about 60 km north of Oslo.

"Repeat performance expect [dagbladet.no]