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Aurora

 


I have been much disappointed by Aurora Borealis performances over my life. Each time they predict one might be visible in our latitudes, I waited up and saw nothing. To be fair, auroras (aurorae?) are kind of fickle. They are created by solar storms that send charged particle into Earth’s upper atmosphere where they interact the atoms there. The timing has to be right. The direction of the charged particles has to be right. That can all be a bit hard to predict. Also, I live close to the 45th parallel. Not a great spot to watch auroras from. We rarely get any this far south.

Still, sometimes they predict when it is possible, and I go out and look to no avail. Last year there was a great aurora that lots of people who live where I do, saw. I didn’t, not for want of trying. My wife and I drove around to places where there was not a lot of light pollution, but no dice. The next morning we saw lots of posts from people who had seen it, even from places I would not think would be good viewing spots.

 But one time I saw it and didn’t realize it. I was out on the Spotted Owl survey with my partner Ed. Around 2:00 AM we were at a station where we could see a red glow in the sky. We were south of Toledo (Oregon) and we assumed what we were seeing was a reflection on the clouds from the lights of the mill at Toledo. We didn’t think any more about it until we got back in the office at 5:00 AM and the other survey team had left us a note: “did you see the aurora borealis?” Oh! Realization hit. I felt embarrassed and also disappointed that we had missed out. If I had known what we were looking at I would have stayed to appreciate it.

Since then, nothing. I check on days where the Aurora Borealis Forecast says there is a decent chance, but nothing. Then a couple of weeks ago (January 19th & 20th) there was another one. My wife went to bed, and I told her that I would look when I went to bed around midnight, and if there was anything there, I would wake her up. I checked at midnight: nothing. For some reason, I woke up at 5:30 AM. I decided to go check it out. I took my phone with me and stood at the end of the driveway (I wasn’t going to drive all around looking for something that probably wasn’t there). I thought I saw a very faint pinkish area of the northeast sky. I got my phone out and took a picture. Yes, something there. I switched my phone into night mode and took another picture. Wow! There it was. I went inside and got my wife up. But getting from a deep sleep and then dressed and then more clothes because it’s cold, took a while. By the time we got out there it was gone. Oh well, at least I had a picture to show her.

Star Liner

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