Aurora Borealis / Northern Lights

[bookhunter2007]

Anyone seen them or want to see them?

There's a reasonable chance of seeing them in UK tonight (Mon 22nd) weather permitting:

http://www.aurora-service.eu/aurora-forecast/

As a very rough KP guide for location:

KP5 - Can be seen from North Scotland

KP6 - Can be seen from Scotland/Northumberland

KP7 - Can be seen from North Wales / E Anglia

KP8 - Can be seen from most of UK, bar south coast.

KP9 - Can be seen from all of UK

If you've not seen them before, the chances of seeing them are increased further (and looking) North, away from light pollution, and with a clear sky. And dark obviously.  A SLR Camera on Tripod pointing North, with auto-focus off (set manually to infinity), and a shutter speed of 15 secs, ISO 400/800 are standard settings if you want to photograph them.

Twitter's also a good guide as to where they can be seen using the #aurora hashtag:

https://twitter.com/search?q=aurora

Here's one I made earlier...

[******lynda******]

Used to see them regularly when I lived further north. I wish I had appreciated the sight more and taken photographs.

Even the night sky is something I thought was amazing at the time and I really hate the light pollution here. My OH has no concept of what a proper sky, or the aurora borealis is like

[jazzymazzy2015]

Never seen them, but it's on my bucket list.

[suzieseaside]

Would love to see them, but I am far south.

That's a good link (aurora-service) - thanks.  I have bookmarked that for when I'm up north.

[bookhunter2007]

#1 & #2 I'd highly recommend Iceland. Best times to see them are between September and March. It does get alot of cloud cover at times but it's pretty spectacular when clear, and they 'dance'. It was a bit odd when adjusting to barely any daylight during the 4 hour daytime tho'.

3# You can occasionally see them down south of UK, but it would take a reading of 9KP or so. You can get an app (Aurora Alert) that send out an alert when that level is predicted to be reached.

The biggest obstacle is getting a clear sky (as I found out last night 😞 ) Northern Ireland seemed the best place to spot them:

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/aurora-borealis-visible-from-northern-irelan...

There's still predicted to be a fair amount of activity over next couple of days, with another large Coronal Mass Ejection (oo err) expected to reach Earth on Wednesday.

[auntieannie44]

We get them quite often (NE Scotland) I used to see them often when I had 2 Labs that needed a late night stroll before bed. Mostly they were green but one night we got a beautiful show of red and purple. I really don't have any reason to go wandering at night any more so I haven't seen them for some time now.