iv read about the aurora been seen in ireland im wondering does this happen often? and i take it its only visible from the northern part of the country
can this happen anytime or is it annual kinda thing...id luv to see it :!:
I have seen it many times. It is not confined to northern observers, it just means that the further north you are towards the magnetic north pole, the greater chance you have of seeing it. In Ireland itself, areas away from major urban areas of light pollution, and costal areas, are best suited to catching them when predictions arise. This is mostly because when activity is high, we are so far south that mostly what we see are faint aurorae. It is not often, but some will simply light up the sky (November 1992, and October and November 2004, to name some memorable "all sky, all nighter" aurorae).
Seanie.
Midlands Astronomy Club.
Radio Presenter (Midlands 103), Space Enthusiast, Astronomy Outreach Co-ordinator.
Former IFAS Chairperson and Secretary.
Try Aurora Watch, they monitor the activity on the sun and send out an alert of possible aurorae if you supply them with an e-mail address.
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning.
I thought my nephew was nuts when he told me he saw them from here a couple of yrs back.
you can see quite a few of them in ireland. back at the last solar maximum i could see a really powerful display in finglas despite all the light pollution and i could even see colour in it.
Aurora, specially ones that are visible from Ireland, are more common around Solar maximum. This is a couple of years away yet but there are always exceptions to the rule.
See www.kerryastronomyclub.com/gallery-aur.htm
I've seen aurora a few times from north Cork county in the past few years. However I haven't managed to photograph one yet.
Can we expect more aurora over the next few years?
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.
Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996)
I have only ever saw one which was on 20th Nov 2003 in Belfast with all its light pollution. The sun is now coming out of its minimum cycle so we will start to get a higher chance of getting some. And now that I live in a nice dark site I can't wait to see how much brighter it will be compared to Belfast. In 2003 I actually went to my next door neighbour and dragged him out to look at it. He was not that impressed :roll:
