Aurora Borealis AKA Northern Lights

Factual Questions
1

I’m looking for posters on allwalls.com right now, and there are some really cool pictures of this.

What exactly is it?

2

http://www.go2net.org/cur/aurora.html

Explanations, predictions, links…

3

You think it’s cool in the pictures, you oughta go see it in real life. It’s very common in my hometown, and we used to see it all the time when we were out late at night. I remember some heavenly nights out on the beach with the Northern Lights pulsing away above me…

4

Thanks for the link funneefarmer. Very informative. I’m definitely going to have to put seeing this in person on my to do list.

5

Saw them once, in the winter of 1990-1991, from here in north central Iowa. Was totally stunned.

Wish there were a way to know when they were going to occur. Sounds like Alaskans have it licked.

Local meteorologists will give us time of sunrise and sunset, and that’s about it.

6

Sky and Telescope magazine very generously offers free subscriptions to (otherwise paid) services for e-mail notification of various astronomical events, including when auroras are most likely.

Here’s the url:
http://www.skypub.com/news/astroalert/astroalert.html

I received a notice about auroras a few months ago, but I was too tired that day to drive away from Chicago’s city lights. The next day I saw on the web that the aurora had been seen from a nearby suburb. In other words, it really works.

You can also see a 3-day forecast of solar activity at http://www.sel.noaa.gov/forecast.html

Probabilities of magnetic storms are given at the end of this document.

7

btw, we are nearing a peak of the 11-year cycle of solar activity, so there should be more auroras in the near future.

8

Have any of you ever seen the Aurora Australis? When I was in South America I didn’t get to see them. I wonder how the two compare.