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Weird aurora.


Guest Stewart Watt

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Guest Stewart Watt

This was taken last night,around 21.45 from Loch Meadie,Caithness,North Scotland.It was pretty much to the West of North West and appeared out of nowhere,well away from the rest of the low,static aurora arc  to the North.It started pulsating quick quickly,similar to when you have overhead corona aurora.

Ive seen a few like this before when there has been a big storm but not when the aurora was basically very quiet and static.About 5 mins after this'blob'appeared the rest of the aurora became more active with rays starting to show .

Any ideas as to what actually causes this type of isolated aurora?

Untitled_Panorama1web.jpg

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Great pic!  Been trying to capture the aurora with the milky way in it all year (even a blob).  Now I have to get a meteorite in there too so I can 1 up this!  Fantastic shot.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest Stewart Watt

The Milky way rotates or i should the earth rotates so just like the stars it rotates as the night progresses.Also the time of year dictates where it will be seen when night falls.

In the spring you get shots of the Milky Way to the North and it is almost horizontal.This one was shot at about 1 am on the 18th April this year.

 

T40A2182web.jpg

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Guest Stewart Watt

Thanks Marcel. Been planing a big canvas for the living room for the last  couple of years,we just cant make up our minds on which one.

Perhaps i should say we cant agree on one.

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Guest Engelsman Finland

Hi I live in the south of Finland. If you are Lucky and have a camera set up at the start of a Aurora moving in you get a lot of minor flares. These vary from lines that march towards you or columns shooting up to the sky. I think this happens at a lower KP but with high density and -BZ (i dont have live figures running while watching) then when the kp comes up you get a greater coverage in the sky. 

That's a great photo! Just head out when the chances of a storm are high. I think you will get some more great shots.

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Guest Stewart Watt

Engelsman Finalnd.Have seen this before and usually during a strong storm with high KP levels.During the strong storm of feb 2014 there were several of these

totally isolated areas of aurora.

 

Ken Kennedy who is chairman of the British Astronomical Associations aurora section sent me this email explaining his interpretation of it.

Hi Stewart,

 

Great to hear from you and thanks for your wonderful images.  Very interesting forms shown in your images as the 'blob' is quite detached from the rest of the display.  To a certain degree, any answer I give you is somewhat speculative but after describing what you saw, the appearance then pulsating of the blob, I suspect the following may approximately describe what was going on.  I have been interested in pulsating aurora for a long time and recent investigation suggests that the electrons which create pulsation are less energetic than those which are deposited into the earth's magnetic field directly from a sub-storm event.  It seems that at the time of a sub-storm (which it sounds as if you saw) the overload of electrons can lose energy but rapidly travel from north to south poles, back and forth, causing pulsations at both poles almost simultaneously.  These lower power electrons don't need a sub-storm, which is usually caused by a CME event, but in this case there was a compression of the slower moving solar wind by a faster moving component.  I suspect the blob, pulsating or otherwise, is the result of an eccentric dose of electrons, detached from the main stream which is occurring at the time.  This eccentricity of arc and blob may well be a result of the unusual cause of the injection of electrons into the Earth's magnetic field.   However, I must see if I can find confirmation of this idea - if any exists. 

 

It has been interesting to see the changing cause of onset of magnetic storms since solar maximum.  The past year has seen G1 - G3 storms initiated by high speed solar streams, many having coronal holes as sources, rather than flares and CMEs.  It's certainly in keeping with a declining solar cycle but, I feel, is happening more rapidly than in previous solar cycles I have been aware of.  There have been few solar flares and CMEs recently - in fact really quite few sunspots at all.  In past solar cycles I have been aware of different auroral forms and patterns with fewer true sub-storm events and rather more quiet displays.  It could be an interesting winter but I'm looking now mainly at solar wind speeds, coronal holes and the direction of the Bz,

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