Thought I'd share a few pictures from what greeted me as I stepped outside last night.







The last couple years have been very weak for the northern lights, so this was a little surprising to see in September. Beautiful none the less.

Did you sound like the "Double rainbow" guy when you saw them?

Glory Days;495845 wrote:Did you sound like the "Double rainbow" guy when you saw them?

Lol, no. It's a common thing up here, I was just a little surprised because it's still pretty warm out, and it was a full moon. Had it been a new moon, it'd have been much brighter.

Awesome pics

Those are very cool. I saw them once in Oxford, OH about 10 years ago.

We got to see an aurora at school near Chicago my freshman year of college. We had just started having small group when someone came and told us what was going on. We went out and spent the rest of our small group time laying on the ground watching the light show. We decided there was no reason talking about God when we could watch that.

And next time you go out and see that going on, you should shoot a video like the double rainbow guy.

My old principal Seymour Skinner once saw the Aurora Boeralis in his oven, much to the dismay of Super Nintendo Chalmers.

PS, great pics! I have to make it to Alaska sometime soon.

Saw them in Alaska as well a couple years. We also get to see them at my cottage in northern Michigan (though nothing as clear and bright as what Alaska produces).

Saw them once wile at my family's cabin in the upper peninsula of michigan. It wasn't too good, but I'd love to see them bright someday

BigAppleBuckeye;495888 wrote:My old principal Seymour Skinner once saw the Aurora Boeralis in his oven, much to the dismay of Super Nintendo Chalmers.

PS, great pics! I have to make it to Alaska sometime soon.

lol, this was the first thing i thought of also.

i saw them camping in minnesota near the canadian border in Ely and they were awesome plus the greatest camping n canoeing ever

On my bucket list to see at some point. Those pics are sweet.

That would be very cool to see someday.

Aliens... It's the only logical, scientific explanation.

I saw them during my Army days in Anchorage, Alaska a few .... okay more than a few years ago.

ernest_t_bass;497253 wrote:Aliens... It's the only logical, scientific explanation.

LOL.

As for the photos....that's awesome. I don't know much about it....what causes it (aside from ETB's logical, scientific "alien" explanation)?

Question...does it just "stay" there like a cloud, or does it "move" or anything? You can tell I've never seen it in real life, and it does look amazing. I've always wondered if there was ever any movement but you can't tell from the pictures.

raiderbuck;500025 wrote:Question...does it just "stay" there like a cloud, or does it "move" or anything? You can tell I've never seen it in real life, and it does look amazing. I've always wondered if there was ever any movement but you can't tell from the pictures.

Same here. I've also wondered if it changes color.

It moves like a wave and will appear in different colors. But it isnt fast moving like all the videos you will see. They have camera shots like this youtube, but its a time lapse. So I dont know how many hours they recorded and condensed into a few minutes.

I watched them for about an hour before and it moved a little from the original spot, but not fast enough to really tell live.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcfWsj9OnsI

Glory Days;495845 wrote:Did you sound like the "Double rainbow" guy when you saw them?

You mean like these guys?

[video=youtube;kCGxLiH51Ck][/video]

"Aurora Borealis? At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country, localized ENTIRELY within your kitchen?"

"Yes."

"May I see it?"

'No."

when i watched it we got an awesome show the best way to explain it is that they move in waves and we say green yellow and red color changes it was worth canoeing 25 miles and portaging 5 miles on three hours of sleep

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100928/sc_afp/finlandenvironmentsciencearctic_20100928164050

"The Northern Lights have petered out during the second half of this decade, becoming rarer than at any other time in more than a century, the Finnish Meteorological Institute said Tuesday.

The Northern Lights, or aurora borealis, generally follow an 11-year "solar cycle", in which the frequency of the phenomena rises to a maximum and then tapers off into a minimum and then repeats the cycle.

"The solar minimum was officially in 2008, but this minimum has been going on and on and on," researcher Noora Partamies told AFP.

"Only in the past half a year have we seen more activity, but we don't really know whether we're coming out of this minimum," she added.

The Northern Lights, a blaze of coloured patterns in the northern skies, are triggered by solar winds crashing into the earth and being drawn to the magnetic poles, wreaking havoc on electrons in the parts of the atmosphere known as the ionosphere and magnetosphere.

So a dimming of the Northern Lights is a signal that activity on the sun which causes solar winds, such as solar flares and sun sports, is also quieting down.

For researchers like Partamies, it is the first time they can observe through a network of modern observation stations what happens to this solar cycle when it becomes as badly disrupted as it is now.

"We're waiting to see what happens, is the next maximum going to be on time, is it going to be late, is it going to be huge?" Partamies said.

During the cycle's peak in 2003, the station on Norway's Svalbard island near the North Pole, showed that the Northern Lights were visible almost every single night of the auroral season, which excludes the nightless summer months.

That figure has fallen to less than 50y percent, while the southernmost station, situated in southern Finland, has been registering only two to five instances annually for the past few years."