NEAT!
Woo! Planetary K-index of 7 expected for the next two days! And those two big sunspots are in geoeffective position right now, if we could just have another huge Coronal Mass Ejection riiiight about now, that'd be OK with me*. And as of the last consecutive ninety minutes, the baseline levels of flare-associated X-ray activity are climbing back up. It's possibleeee!! Oh man, that would be really good news for my project, geomagnetic activity has been pretty scant lately. Our orbit just became favorable for my science, in particular. Welp, back to what's really important in life: making slideshows. *The notion of attempting to communicate to the current administration (in real time) any serious outages that our military satellites experience from a large CME scares me halfway to death. That could be somebody's actual job someday. Many lives could hang in the balance. shudder edit: just had an X-class flare, aww yissss. About the 15th largest flare (as of the time of this edit, could still grow...) of the last solar cycle. That's like, 10 years. First X-class in a long time, too. Standing by for the likely announcement of full halo (Earth-directed) CME via LASCO. Source: I hit up solarham.com literally every day, this is my life. Welcome.
Smokes to bad here to see a mountain so I'm doubting they'll be visible. A month or two back though everybody came out of the bar and it was this huge green streak right over the building. I felt bad for anybody who made the wise choice of going to bed early instead of getting shitfaced.
We have a standing invite to set up and do "ambush astronomy" in front of a bar and liquor store with an... interesting reputation. From past experience, before sunset women show up and get their booze of choice clean cut people in business attire get their craft beer, hipster kids roll through and get whatever artisan avocado toasted ale they get. Then, when the sun goes down, it is all rough-around-the-edges blue collar and biker types. The bar has a reputation for back in the day there were stabbings, drugs, gangs, etc at the place but now it is just a bar. When we go and show up, the first rough looking chaps will wander over, go something along the lines of "NO SHIT YOU CAN SEE THAT?" and start making calls. Ernest is one of the big guys who has been there for years and when we are there, and he is there, he barks for us, in an endearingly rough sort of fashion. more along the lines of "get your punk ass over here and look at the nerd shit asshole." We have fun, we get 200+ people looking through the telescopes and we get funny stories to tell. There are other groups that intentionally target bars for outreach which is where I got the idea. We've been invited to some of the high-brow bourbon places because of the bar nights, and the bourbon places offer donations to the society so everyone wins. The shit I do for this fucking club, man.
This can apply to so many situations.I felt bad for anybody who made the wise choice of going to bed early instead of getting shitfaced.
Gonna be clear after midnight in Detroit. Think I'll take a drive a bit north to get out of the light pollution tonight! Is it worth taking my binoculars with me? I've never seen NL before (every time they've been forecast around here, I've always been left disappointed), so I have no idea how to best view.
While I was asleep, there was another flare event ~5x larger than what I was losing my shit over earlier. It's big. If conditions are anywhere near what I think they probably will be, you're not going to need to get too far outside of the city to see these bad boys. "Friday night lights" (but maybe on Thursday). Take your optics anyway. I'll turn your hubwheel orange with an updated forecast, I'm still waiting for more data to confirm the large CME that I suspect is inbound for Earth. I envy you so much right now.
Not yet. My gut says wee morning hours of Friday, right before we'll rotate into daylight. Hopefully it's a big enough event to maintain the aurora until the sun sets. I think there's a very good chance that it will be, but I'm waiting to hear whether or not the magnetic field is oriented in the correct direction to give us maximum action. We may not know for sure until it hits Lagrange point 1, less than an hour upstream of us.
OMFG bro. It's here earlier than anyone thought. And the magnetic field is the most ideal for producing aurora that I've ever seen! Start driving out of the city. Like, now. I'll let you know if the conditions change, but I was worried I'd overhyped this, and it looks like I didn't. If the solar wind conditions hold like they are right now, this will be one for the record books. Let me know what you do! Tonight is the night.
Oh god damnit. I'm sorry man. As far north as you are, it shouldn't be too hard to see some more aurorae within a few years, if you make it a priority. Maybe tomorrow night. Aced quals, btw. Getting drunk
Yuge CME confirmed. I'll walk back on my earlier words, the best viewing will probably be on Friday evening for us in the 'states. ACE data from Lagrange point 1 says that the CME from Monday's flare hasn't even arrived there yet, and you'll need at least two hours after it hits ACE to see aurora. Tonight won't be bad viewing, but Friday will be spectacular. Friday's aurora may actually be too far south of you, still dunno about that B-field direction, but this CME about to hit should give us an idea. I guarantee that there are some folks in the spaceweather modeling and forecasting communities working around the clock right now. Besides me, I mean (quals tomorrow, lol).