What a birthday present! I got what I always wanted: a chance to see the Northern Lights! Earlier today I got an e-mail from Spaceweather.com saying:Big sunspot 696 unleashed an X-class solar flare on Sunday, Nov. 7th, and probably hurled another coronal mass ejection (CME) toward Earth. Solar wind conditions are favorable for a geomagnetic storm now (late Nov. 7th) and may become even more so when the CME arrives. Sky watchers: be alert for auroras on Nov. 7th, 8th and 9th. The best time to look is usually around local midnight.
At eleven:thirty, my brother Mark called up to alert me of sightings. He said they were straight overhead, but when I got outside I was seeing them faintly, low in the northeast. As I continued to stay out, the aurora grew stronger, spreading upward in a wide ribbon from the northeast across the sky to the southeast.
Aurora Borealis
Thank goodness my camera was fully charged, because I gave it quite a workout, leaving the shutter open fifteen seconds at a time. Maybe one of these days I’ll move my SFG Photo Gallery here (to the dot-org location), but for now I’ve uploaded the best of my photos here [since moved to a Flickr album].
