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Most of Europe is glowing pink under the aurora

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241–250 of 406 posts

Re: Most of Europe is glowing pink under the aurora

#242
post #15

Most of Europe == Not covered by light polution. (and specific areas) (it's orange outside and it's sodium vapor related) edit: kind of whish I was at my parent's place. It's a lot less poluted but no go here; nw europe densly populated, we also have the artificial sunrise here 24/7 by means of greenhouses.

> we also have the artificial sunrise here 24/7 by means of greenhouses.

That's a Dutch thing. You can choose between being a great exporter of unripe, tasteless tomatoes, or seeing Aurora Borealis, but you can't have both..

Re: Most of Europe is glowing pink under the aurora

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait no way? That’s where the pirate eye patch trope comes from? There was a practical reason?

I had assumed it was because, being a pirate, you were more likely to have had one of your eyes poked out during some sort of mêlée. But that’s much more interesting…

I've read another theory: It's because of the sun damage to their eye from using a sextant for navigation. Haven't been able to confirm it though.

Re: Most of Europe is glowing pink under the aurora

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40324332

I can’t tell what to make of that. It looks normal northern to me but people are saying it’s going to be visible in Alabama tonight.

Saw it in N Texas between dark +15minutes and about 2:30 this morning. Really nice. I've waited since 2003 to see another from my front yard. I caught the big ones during that last solar max including the X27 flare auroras. This show came from a merging of several X-class flares in quick succession. There was an X5.7 today that may also give us a show in 2-3 days depending on whether it had an earth-directed component.

spaceweather.com spaceweatherlive.com

other links in related posts also have additional sites to track things like this. Good luck.

Re: Most of Europe is glowing pink under the aurora

#245

Here are some phone pics from my home village in Germany: https://www.nowhereinparticular.xyz/polarlichter.html This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. My brother, who is a hobby astronomer, called me and sent me outside. Initially, I saw only a faint red glow in the northeast of the sky, but after a few minutes, my eyes adapted and I could see how it slowly moved and changed its form over time. I stayed outside fo…

In southern Netherlands at the coast, with a 10 sec exposure, iPhone 12 mini, main cam, I was able to see some pink and green with streaks. To my eyes it was like faint clouds that changed to quickly to be clouds, better visible when I didn’t look straight at them. Your pics are something else, but what was it like to your eyes?

Re: Most of Europe is glowing pink under the aurora

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use the old pirate trick and keep an eye patch over one of the eyes, and switch when going outside. They used it to be able to see inside the boat going from bright sunlight.

Wait no way? That’s where the pirate eye patch trope comes from? There was a practical reason?

There's no evidence that this use was real. Mythbusters tried it and said the trick itself does work (which any of has may already know), but who knows if it was even practical in a pirate boat, vs the loss of stereo vision etc.

The whole idea of pirates wearing eyepatches seems simply the replication of one particularly colorful pirate archetype over centuries of literature and tales.

Re: Most of Europe is glowing pink under the aurora

#247

Here are some phone pics from my home village in Germany: https://www.nowhereinparticular.xyz/polarlichter.html This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. My brother, who is a hobby astronomer, called me and sent me outside. Initially, I saw only a faint red glow in the northeast of the sky, but after a few minutes, my eyes adapted and I could see how it slowly moved and changed its form over time. I stayed outside fo…

In southern Netherlands at the coast, with a 10 sec exposure, iPhone 12 mini, main cam, I was able to see some pink and green with streaks. To my eyes it was like faint clouds that changed to quickly to be clouds, better visible when I didn’t look straight at them. Your pics are something else, but what was it like to your eyes?

The colors in my pics are a bit more intense than they were to the eyes, but not by that much. They were all clearly visible, including all the structures, glowing. It is pretty dark where I come from, the next city is dozens of kilometers away.

Re: Most of Europe is glowing pink under the aurora

#248

Well visible in Belgium starting around 23:30 ! Even with the naked eye ! (From outside the city)

Still true now? In the netherlands hard to tell anything. Certainly nothing on the level of the Swiss pictures being shared.

I stayed up until about 1AM only. Views from the mountains are hard to match in any case 8-)

Re: Most of Europe is glowing pink under the aurora

#249
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok why is it that some people say northern lights look EXACTLY like these spectacular photos, and others say in real life they are actually barely visible and you need a camera and very dark skies? Is there some kind of running joke I’m missing? I saw some northern lights in Iceland but they were very dim and underwhelming, I didn’t even know what I was looking at until I photographed them and saw the vivid green str…

I’ve seen both. Last night from London the most I could see with my naked eye was diffuse patches of faint pink and green - sometimes highlighted by marginally brighter white-pink streaks that cut across the patches. The camera however picked them up as dramatic bright pink/green columns of light with rarely any trace of the blackness of the sky. When I was in Iceland a few years ago though - I distinctly remember be…

In my back garden in london initially it felt like maybe I was just seeing remnants of having looked at a lightbulb and then looking at the sky. After a bit of eyes adjusting the pinks were very clear and the white streaks like rays of light you see in those kind of beams from heaven type pictures. The green was more on the horizon and initially needed the camera to show it at all, and then again after a while I could see feint green with the naked eye. Yes the camera showed it more, but the naked eye experience was also magical and I feel very lucky to have seen it on bbc news website by chance before going to bed. I watched it from 11:15pm to midnight when it seemed to vanish as if it was never there in the first place. I feel like I caught the ISS in a photo too but I can’t find definitive information it was overhead at 11:51pm uk time, so it probably wasn’t.

Re: Most of Europe is glowing pink under the aurora

#250

I feel I need to report my experience from Denmark, Jutland. It started with white broad streaks, which most of all looked like fog, but then perhaps after 10 minutes or so, we saw colors of red, purple and green begin to emerge from the these streaks. Most astoundingly it all seemed to emanate from a fluctuating point in the middle of the sky. If you looked closely at this point you could see it fall into itself, mo…

I’m a few thousand kilometres south of you in Portugal - here, we got the side view of what was above you, and it was spectacular - pink sky underlit by blue and green filled with vast columns. It really gave me the sense of being a tiny thing on a virtually naked sphere hurtling through the void - seeing such titanic structures really puts things into scale.
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