Aurora alerts

Son_of_Thor

Son_of_Thor

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I couldn't have headed out last night anyway, but I didn't know there was the possibility of an Aurora until it was far too late get away from our local weather (wall to wall clouds and rain as usual).

Does anyone know of any good sources of info on Aurora activity that they'd care to share? An alerting service would be ideal. Thanks in advance :)
 
I use the iOS app AuroraWatch UK.

I use it to tell me when there is thick cloud cover and rain....
 
The Glendale app is the best in terms of detail but (on my phone at least) it often fails to send alerts, so I follow AuroraWatch on Twitter to get notifications and then check Glendale for details
 
Thanks for the info folks, I'll check out the apps and Twitter (it'll always be twitter in my mind, even if it's had a name change!)
 
The thing to remember with Aurora Watch UK is that the reading is an hourly Cumulative reading. That means its the amount of activity added up over the hour period, Not what it is at any specific time.
 
Oh and "Hello Aurora" coupled with Aurora Watch UK is pretty good.

If you also monitor some of the space weather twitter accounts you can get a bit of advance notice as it typically takes 2-3 days for it to hit the Earth after Solar Activity (If it's in our direction, this current storm was from a CME on the 3rd)
 
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keety said:
The thing to remember with Aurora Watch UK is that the reading is an hourly Cumulative reading. That means its the amount of activity added up over the hour period, Not what it is at any specific time.
Click to expand...

keety said:
Oh and "Hello Aurora" coupled with Aurora Watch UK is pretty good.

If you also monitor some of the space weather twitter accounts you can get a bit of advance notice as it typically takes 2-3 days for it to hit the Earth after Solar Activity (If it's in our direction, this current storm was from a CME on the 3rd)
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info, looks like I'll need to keep an eye out in a few places :)
 
Well, it looks like there could be a good chance of seeing the Aurora in the North of England tomorrow night
 
I wouldn’t trust a lot of these apps like aurora watch - the best way is Facebook groups and people that analyse the stats on an hour by hour basis. Glendale for sightings. but it’s all getting a bit silly now.

Was great a few years ago when I could go out up in Orkney and get something fairly unique for the uk but now we are getting towards solar maximum and the media are broadcasting or posting fairly baseless stuff the whole world wants to go out and take photos of them…

…which is fine but most of them don’t really know what they are doing…

Tonight is a case in point - at no point did it look more than 50/50 and most of the time probably 75/25 but you have joe public watching bbc and going out with high expectations and most of them…


…. Have SLRs but can’t and don’t know how to properly expose, shoot manual or know what the exposure triangle is

….try to take them on their mobile phone and are even more clueless

….just want to take picture of the lights and have no concept of leader lines, foreground, framing and end up with a black foreground

… sit there or drive around with main beam on while others try to shoot them

….expect to see the, either in city centres or consider them appearing in Cornwall as a given

… don’t understand that the pictures you see aren’t what your eyes see….

…don’t understand the impact of moon phases or light pollution


Sorry for the rant. All for helping people but a lot just don’t help themselves!
 
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