By Jo Nova
UPDATED: The Bureau of Met has issued another Aurora Watch for today (Tuesday 13th). Interested readers can sign up to get these emails, which give a few hours warning of promising conditions.
A major substorm is in progress. People are reporting auroras on the Glendale App across southern Australia and NZ. Because we are in the maximal part of solar cycle 25, with the peak (so far) in sun spots recorded a few days ago, conditions are ripe for auroras, but they are alas, fleeting things. Next burst of activity likely at 9:40pm EST and 7:40pm WST. [Reports live from Mandurah, Flinders Island, Adelaide hills….]
The image from Nullschool is loosely indicative (and usually underestimates the odds).
A keenly waiting in anticipation Tasmanian here. People often forget that we exist inside the sun’s atmosphere. Lovely evening for it.
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Sorry, I didn’t forget Tasmania. I just assumed that it was a given that if NSW is spotting some, Tasmanians are already bored. I’m just jealous…
There are always fantastic shots of auroras from Tas and NZ.
Up here at 31` we live in hope.
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Raining cats and dogs here. No chance
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Some heat from a large, strong coronal mass ejection was stopped by the moon being in the right place the other day.
You read about Carrington events and how a new one might affect engineering like power lines. Some in that business tell me not to worry because modern power lines are designed to cope with lightning which was not the case for the original Carrington.
But then, there is an odd lump of material hurtling this way, predicted to miss Earth by very little, big enough for monster tsunami waves if it hits an ocean.
There are forever ulcer causing events in the news -if it bleeds, it leads – but then proper science told us how to treat ulcers the Nobel way. Nobel Prize, Marshall & Warren style, not Nobel nitroglycerine style ….. Geoff S
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Raining cats and dogs comes from a distant time when people told funny jokes and teased each other with gay abandon. Another turn of phrase from that era was a petrol ad that went “What is better than a Tiger in the Tank? A female lion on the back seat.”
Ah, nostalgia for those shaggy dog jokes. Did you hear about the Wednesday ladies’ day at the golf club when the bushes parted to reveal a guy, completely naked, making a streak from the green to the carpark. “He’s not my husband” said the first wife, protectively. “He is not my husband either” said the second wife. Wife three of the quartet added “Not my husband either”. Wife four chirped up,”Why, he’s not even in the Club”.
Thank goodness that my favourite blogs have not taken notice of woke, except when having fun deriding it. Pray for a return when crusty and fruity were words to describe jokes, now days more likely to turn up in a trans vegan cooking book. Geoff S
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Don’t forget the old “Double Entendre” I once went out with two girls from Entendre, it was a fabulous double.
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https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en.html
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Looks like we now have a G4 storm. Will we see a G5 again?
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
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Thanks Jo for the heads up. I happened to wake up at 3:57 and read your report.
I am staying the night in the Otway ranges in SW Victoria so I went out to take a look.
Nothing much to see but trees were obscuring my view.
So I took a short drive down the bush track to get a southerly aspect and thought I could see a faint glow above the southern horizon. With maybe hint of green.
Before giving up and turning in ,I decided to try some photos with my mobile phone. Exposure time was about 2 seconds.
Back home warming up I looked at my photos and was quite astounded by what I saw. There was a wonderful red glow lighting up a quarter of the sky with yellows above the horizon! My old eyes had not deceived me.
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Auroras visible in Newcastle about seventy years ago.
Report from Sydney, but Novocastria enjoyed them too.
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/18152663&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwi7-b6XoPCHAxWLqFYBHdpeCjoQFnoECAcQAg&usg=AOvVaw14kVw_cRVtL8-WolCcVpBy
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I can’t wait until “climate change” is blamed for the auroras…
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Didn’t see any strange lights in the sky, however, Mars & Jupiter made a lovely – if I may, can I say, gay – pair as they (almost) joined in a near-conjunction rising out of the east approx. 3 a.m., reflecting enough sunlight to create a sparkle [hence gay] dancing on the ocean below.
With the Pleiades, Taurus, Orion’s Belt and Sirius the Dog Star constellations arcing across the night sky – Mars & Jupiter were just below Taurus the Bull – it’s easy to see how earlier civilisations created their ‘origin stories’ to explain the magnificence and vastness of the Great Out Doors.
Maybe Lady Aurora will reappear tonight…
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Try taking a photo. See #7.
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Does anyone know what phase of the solar cycle we are in?
Apparently the frequency of auroras is greatest 2-3 years after the solar maximum.
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A bigger issue is the increased weakening of the Earth’s magnetic field.
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That we can see them from what are weak solar storms is an indicator the Earth’s weakening magnetic field. A repeat of the Carrington event might be interesting.
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As we’ve got a raging storm outside, including an electrical storm earlier, I’m not venturing out. Anyway it will be overcast.
However the ionosphere has been ionised heavily thus making the upper HF bands very good for long distance propagation.
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