What conditions required to see aurora in Twin Cities, MN?

[Guest Skylove]

Lack of transportation (no car and having to rely on public transportation) eliminates my chances of leaving the city to view the Northern Lights. There's also this annoying safety thing/concern about being female, outside in the middle of the night alone.  I resent it, but it is what it is. I used to believe that it wasn't possible to see them in the city until one week in September this year.  There were two days I saw them. The first night was just an odd looking cloud that I photographed. The photograph revealed the colors.  The second day, I saw some of the green flash move around the sky without my camera as well as with it.  It was a much quicker show. By the time I was able to alert anyone to watch it, the show faded. The first show lasted for what seemed all night.

Ever since that moment I've been watching the skies, this site and others hoping for another shot at seeing them.  So far it is resulting in a lot of wasted nights of no sleep and no sign of the lights.  It looks like in my area a Kp of 5 - 5.5 should be able to generate a show in my area, but so far it hasn't. I've come to realize there must be other factors than the weather and the KP. More precisely what conditions need to be met overall?

Was the experience just a once in a life time event or will I get more chances of seeing the Northern Lights out my window?

[Marcel de Bont]

It is possible to see aurora from urban areas as your images shows, I have seen them countless of times as well from urban areas, but we do not recommend it as they need to be fairly strong and it is easy to be disappointing if you try your luck from urban areas. Weaker aurora can be very hard to notice or even see from inside such light polluted areas. Kp5 should indeed be enough for your area but a Kp5 doesn't mean it really is Kp5 all the time. The observed Kp-index is a valued measured in the past and the predicted Kp-index is a prediction and predictions can be incorrect.

Two things here which you should keep an eye on in the future are magnetometers and the solar wind/IMF data. Understanding these two principles will put you ahead of the pack:

Magnetometers are sensitive instruments which measure how disturbed Earth's magnetic field is. Most provide near realtime data and this is a great tool to pinpoint active auroral periods. Read about the Kiruna magnetometer in Europe here: http://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/help/the-kiruna-magnetometer

However that is Europe and you need a magnetometer close to your location, perhaps Alaska might work. I do not know so much about North American magnetometer locations so maybe someone else knows a good magnetometer for you. The GOES magnetometers might work which are on satellites in space orbiting over NA: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/goes-magnetometer

A big drop means likely strong aurora!

Other thing you should watch is the data from ACE, how fast and dense is the solar wind and what is the IMF doing. Especially the IMF is important. If you see that the direction of the IMF (Bz) turns south (minus) for long periods we know auroral activity will increase. The lower this number goes the better. Solar wind: http://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/help/the-solar-wind
IMF:http://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/help/the-interplanetary-magnetic-field-imf

Turned into a wall of text but hope it still makes sense.

[Guest Skylove]

Thank you so much.  Yeah I was having trouble finding a Magnetometer link for North America.  That and I'm still trying to learn what the data means, lol.This is one site I lurk, but I tend to find it more optimistic than what I really get. http://www.aurora-service.org/aurora-forecast/

 

I'm guessing that the Bz must be more important than the KP value when it comes to actually seeing the aurora?  If that is true, how low does it have to be for my area?  -1, -5, -10?  I wish I would have found the site when I saw it around September.  It was September 9th and September 11. Both events were around 3:00am-about 5am CDT, if that helps anyone be able to find an archive and explain what values happened those two days and what to look for in the future.

 

That said I thought I saw a hint of something in the sky. Very faint to the North-east of my window about two days ago around 2am, but I looked and saw the KP at 2, so just guess I'm just seeing something from my imagination and want to see than what was.  I've noticed that the sky appears foggy lately.  The weather reports the sky as clear, but what I see is a haze. If I look long enough, I see the stars. Any long exposure photos of it, just reveal a blue twilight colored sky with some grayish haze near the horizon with the city lights glowing into the haze. I've been seeing that a lot lately, but it doesn't sound like anything, I think?  Forecast for the rest of the week is going to be nothing but clouds for 5-6 days. So nope, no northern lights for a while.

[Guest char]

the LATEST ALERTS! | Aurora Borealis Notifications | a ...

auroranotify.com/1230-2/latest/

Hey Skylove... I love the above link , hope it posts for you, it pretty much has everything on one website for aurora all the way up to Alaska, through Canada , and close to you as well.. hope this helps.. they also have archives which may give you info from the dates you mentioned. All the best in MN! From Sask Canada.

[Marcel de Bont]

6 uren geleden, Skylove zei:

I'm guessing that the Bz must be more important than the KP value when it comes to actually seeing the aurora?  If that is true, how low does it have to be for my area?  -1, -5, -10?  I wish I would have found the site when I saw it around September.  It was September 9th and September 11. Both events were around 3:00am-about 5am CDT, if that helps anyone be able to find an archive and explain what values happened those two days and what to look for in the future.

This was the Bz between 07:24 UTC and 09:24 UTC on September 11: Bz fluctuated a bit but values at or below -10nT for a while caused a significant geomagnetic response:

This was the Bz between 07:21 UTC and 09:21 UTC on September 9. The Bz was constant around -10nT.

As you see we use graphs and not gauges as you need to know what happened during the past 2 hours or so. Gauges just show what happens right now which is useless.

As I mentioned, the predicted Wing Kp-index is a prediction. It can happen but it can also not happen. It also has an observed value but that is always a value measured in the past. If you are a beginner then the Kp-index is an okay tool but you will be on top of the game when you learn how to use ACE data. Again highly recommend to read our help articles: http://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/help

If you see the Bz dip southward for some time (-10 or lower would be excellent for your location) then you know that aurora activity will increase soon. If the solar wind speed or density is higher than average as well then that's even better.

Fog is horrible when you are in a city. It's like a big mirror that reflects the light pollution. Maybe you did see aurora when it flared up but without images there is no way to confirm.

[Guest Skylove]

It would seem the conditions right now would be favorable, Bz lower than -10 and kp around 5, but what would be preventing the aurora from being visible in MN, Twin Cities? Is it because the skies are slightly hazy? It is about the clearest night we've had since around the end of September to early November this year. (we've been dealing with chronic cloudy skies overnight since some time early to mid November.)

 

KP is now 7+ and I am still not seeing anything.  Help. I'm missing out. This is what I am seeing instead. Also captured is a screen cap of the site.

[Jesterface23]

Here is a link to an NOAA page to where the clouds are at, http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/gl/h5-mloop-ir4.html. Then this page should be fairly easy with finding where the aurora can be seen near a certain time if people post about it, http://www.aurorasaurus.org/. Two false things to watch for are some locations have the right county or city name, but are in the wrong state, and second, any tweet with the word aurora in it is on that map, so some may not be about the Northern lights. 
Then on the magnetometer side,  you would want to watch BOU which is in Boulder, CO and FRD which is in Fredericksburg, VA on the USGS website, http://geomag.usgs.gov/plots/.

[Guest Skylove]

It does look like the clouds are thicker than I realized for my area. According to that NOAA page, the whole Midwest appears to be covered in clouds.  The second link I am confused.  What am I looking for, high or low values on the charts?

 

I like the twitter/map link.  Bummer that someone from WI and IA can see it but I can't....  At least the IA person mentioned about clouds.

[Marcel de Bont]

The solar wind conditions indeed looked good enough for your area but I think your area had lot's of cloud cover today. Might indeed be more clouded than you realized. Especially when you are trying to capture aurora from a city, you would really need clear skies. Any light pollution is just reflected back by the haze making it even harder to capture something.

[Jesterface23]

If you mean the third link, first look at Spaceweatherlive's help page, http://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/help/the-kiruna-magnetometer, then watch the variations in the H and E components and use the drops or rises in nT to get the K indice from 

(woops, ment to have H and E, just noticed I had D and E there)

K   0    1       2        3        4        5           6            7            8            9
nT 0-5 5-10 10-20 20-40 40-70 70-120 120-200 200-330 330-500 >500

 

It might be good to click the custom time button on the USGS page and compare at the time you saw it before, and noting that both stations are a few states away, so values might be off some from what you actually see. (Hopefully I'm not too confusing lol)

[Guest Skylove]

Grrrr. Still too many clouds....It is so rare to ever see the aurora from my location.  I'm really seriously thinking what I saw was a once and a life time occurrence for my area.

[Marcel de Bont]

You really are north enough to capture aurora during geomagnetic storms but everything needs to be just right for them to appear. You should also not forget you are shooting from an urban area which already makes it harder to see faint aurora. I for sure wouldn't call it a once in a lifetime experience.

[Guest Skylove]

Thanks.  Some of my problem is the landscape. It looks like overhead auroras in the Twin Cities don't happen, but they might just over the horizon or just above like my photos. The photos I took were my first sighting in my life (30+ years). But then again I lived in Southeast WI and in a couple other states earlier in my life. Seeing them from some place like Milwaukee or Chicago would be much rarer. Plus I didn't know quite know what I was looking for.  Even the Auroras I photographed didn't look very bright to my eye. Only the second day's was visibly green. The first day looked just like some weirdly shaped cloud. That one with the blue? Just a very faint haze.  I knew enough that clouds don't usually appear arch shaped. That was what led me to photograph it.

I really need to be up on a hill to get a clear view of the horizon over the trees and buildings. I have that where I live (I'm high enough to clear most of the buildings and all the trees, but not far enough away from the light pollution.)  I can't think of many places I can take the city bus and get to that would allow me a clear vantage point, be far enough away from the main cities (St. Paul and Minneapolis) as well as be safe enough for a single person to be out at such hours as 3am at night.  Dang.

 

Okay maybe there are some buses that can get me somewhere near lake Lake Minnetonka, but I am not sure what their service frequencies would be and whether it would be worth risking about an hour or longer on the bus + waiting to see something that might not occur or be visible. There still might be street lights. Highland Park is a high point, but there are still plenty of street lights in the area to spoil the view just as bad.  The same with walking along bluffs along the Mississippi River.  Just no where to get away from the lights.

[Marcel de Bont]

You can always try from the city you are in when stats look good but all I say is don't expect grand results. Your eyes will be used to the city light and aurora can indeed look to the naked eye like nothing more than a weird cloud or a haze. If the skies aren't crystal clear then any haze will reflect the city lights making it even harder to see something.

Your camera will already pick up much more so if you are unsure just set up your camera and make some test shots. It also important to be patient, just because it all the numbers look good you can also be in a lull in activity. Aurora can flare up at any time. Just because there is a geomagnetic storm doesn't automatically mean that the aurora in super bright all the time. There are a lot of factors in play and being in an urban environment doesn't make it easier. However, if you persist and everything adds up then you will definitely see more aurora in the future.

[Marcel de Bont]

I would try tonight if I were you Skylove. Conditions look pretty good for you!

[Guest Skylove]

It was cloudy and I was spending the night over with my grandma's. That location isn't downtown, but not high enough vantage to see over trees, houses, streetlights.  It would have to be directly overhead to see. The clouds killed it. Thanks for alerting me though.

 

After various clear days, only to have it become cloudy at night, then seemingly clear during the next day, I'm beginning to think during winter that cloudless or clear nights for my region are the exception rather than norm. Interesting I never noticed this until I started looking at the night skies in hopes for events like above.