An alarm rang out this afternoon, I knew it was my phone, but it was a sound I haven't heard in a while,
I checked my device to see what it was and found it was an alert from an app, the Aurora UK alerts app to be exact.
The app itself is connected to AuroraWatch UK - http://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/ which is an space weather site and part of Lancashire University which specialises in Aurora alerts and sends out alerts to the phone app when an Aurora is going to be visible in my area.
The corresponding app which I use on my Android device can be found here AuroraWatch UK Alerts
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| AuroraWatch UK app |
The App was warning me of a rare extremely powerful solar storm that was heading to earth with a rating of Kp9
The Kp-index is a global geomagnetic storm index with a scale of 0 to 9. Based on the Kp-index, you can immediately know if there is a chance to see aurora or not.
With a Kp rating of 9 it meant that the Arora should be visible from most of the UK, which it indeed was as many people flooded social media with pictures of the sky from as far south as Manchester and wales.
Anyways I decided to get the camera out and go see what I could see....Around 8 pm saw a huge spike of Kp8, at this time I was unable to get out of my village as the missus was at work and had the car, she wouldn't finish until around 10pm so it was a bit of a waiting (and hoping) game.
I looked out at the sky from my back yard but saw nothing other than the soft orange glow of local street lamps, I'm in a fairly dark area and on clear nights the milky way is clearly visible from my yard despite the local street lamps, but tonight held nothing so far not even a single star......only mist.
The next hour or so was spent with me furiously watching several weather websites and arora alert pages on both my TV android box, my tablet and laptop, my front room was starting to resemble an amature space / terrestrial weather center as I scanned pages of data....and the signs weren't good.
All the reports said that the best of the Solar storm had hit around 8pm with a maximum Kp8 storm peak, the charts were now in decline and worst of all the terrestrial weather indicated a huge mist and fog bank approaching from the west which threatened and hopes of a clear sky.
Around 9:30 pm the terrestrial weather updated to show a nice hole in the clouds above my location in the western coast area of the lakes district, and although the Aurora service indicated a steady decline in the storm I had a glimmer of hope at least of possibly seeing something.
So I decided to take the plunge and got my kit ready.
As well as My camera and tripod I also made up a flask of coffee and took some chocolate biscuits and then waited for my missus to arrive.
At around 10:15pm my missus arrived home and I dove into the car and we set off in search of a suitable spot to take some shots, it needed to be unobstructed and facing north, preferably across the sea as thats the best bet of it being the darkest.
The nearest coastal town to me is my old hometown of Whitehaven and there are several popular spots there for taking photos which overlook the towns historic harbour, but I guessed this would cause a couple of problems.
Firstly those popular spots are indeed just that....popular....if anyone else was on the ball thats the most likely spot they would choose to take photos from and my hunch was right as I found out later their were several people at that location.
Secondly the town and harbour have several brightly lit structures or art installations if you will that although are nice to otherwise photograph at night, weren't really going to be favorable to the misty conditions that we were currently encountering as it magnified the local light pollution and would more than likely drown out any faintly visible Aurora...or so I figured.
On the other hand an image of the Aurora above the town would be spectacular....choices, choices...
I quickly decided against going into town and instead knew of a nice dark place overlooking the sea just on the outskirts of town which had a rough track leading up to it which we could drive right up.
The journey only took about 10 minutes and so we were at the location and getting the camera setup by around 10:30 pm....but alas the weather wasn't looking great, we were encountering freezing mist so as the sky was clearing and the temps were dropping rapidly now, the 1 degree C temps meant after the past few wet days of milder weather the atmosphere wasn't playing ball.
I took a few test snaps and although I was excited to see some signs of the Aurora through the camera the combined effect of the declining storm and the mist was obvious.
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| Declining storm and low mist gave poor results |
I was a little disheartened but at the same time this was my first time seeing the Aurora 'live' so also felt quite excited and I continued to snap away regardless.
Soon there was another alert from my phone, I looked at it and saw that the storm was beginning to ramp up again...
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| Aurora forecast for March 17th 2015 |
At this time I had been snapping away for some 20 minutes and noticed that the mist had almost now fully dissapated and the aforementioned terrstrial forecast had come true and the skies cleared beuitifully.
Soon we could see colums of faint light rising up from the horizon and into the sky and I again began to snap away with the camera....
Over the next 25 minutes we were treat to the most spectacular sight I have ever witnessed, the sky at the storms peak at around 11:15pm was lit up with huge columns of light that danced around each other, before it gave a huge majestic finale in the form of massive pulses and shockwaves of light that resembled something from a science fiction movie like huge shockwaves on a spaceships shields or massive ripples on a pond but these were ripple of light that danced across the sky.
And then almost as soon as it had arrived, it stopped...we waited for around 10 minutes to see if it would escalate again but then we began to see the cloud cover approach and knew that the show was over.
It seems that at that moment we had encountered the storms highest point where it reached Kp9, the mist had settled and that hole in the cloud cover had all come together at just the right time to make this a perfect storm of conditions to see this spectacular light show, its definitely something both me and my missus will remember for the rest of our days.
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| Kp reading charts for 17th March 2015 |
Until next time...
Stay safe and have fun!
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