Friday, September 16, 2005

 

Northern Lights

Woo hoo! Dr. ER and I, who have been known to chase a dry line or two in the spring, are goin' chasin' the aerosolius bareassus(sp?) tonight, otherwise known as the Northern Lights!

Wish us luck! In seeing 'em, and in stayin' awake!

--ER


From Sky & Telescope

(Sept. 15, 2005) -- No major auroral display was seen last night, even though a coronal mass ejection from a solar flare on Sept. 13 swept past Earth on schedule. Keep watch in the coming nights.

During the last week, a large, intensely active sunspot complex known as Region 10808 (or 808 for short) has exploded with nine X-class flares and many smaller M-class flares. These have altered the near-Earth environment, disrupted radio communications, and caused beautiful auroras across much of North America on the morning of Sept. 11.

Also, from Physorg.com:

The aurora borealis has been seen in the United States as far south as Arizona.

Read more.

Comments:
"Woo hoo! Dr. ER and I, who have been known to chase a dry line or two in the spring, are goin' chasin' the aerosolius bareassus(sp?) tonight, otherwise known as the Northern Lights!"

Is "aerosolius bareassus" a reference to spraying for assholes?
 
get some good pics
 
How cool! Where did you have to go to see it?

RebelAngel
 
ER, have fun! That's awesome. Pix, please!
 
Took a gander half past midnight. Couldn't tell what I saw. May have been the glare from the 7-11 sign down the street.
Last time I saw the Northern Lights was on a Sunday evening down in Tillman county in 1957.
Same year I saw a comet and Sputnik. But then, there was a sky back in 1957.
Good luck on your quest. Remember half of happiness is novelty.
 
What's a dry line?
 
Where a line of thunderstorms is likely to form. Around here, see a dry line setting up out west, hall butt toward thre west to get on the other side of it, and you can follow it back in as it heads east (usually pattern of lines of storms here). That's we call it "storm following," not "storm chasing."

From, um, some weather site:

Dry Line – A boundary between moist air and dry air with little or no temperature difference during mid-day. It often serves as a focus for convective initiation.

Convection - A transfer of heat within a fluid by fluid motions. Meteorologists refer to vertical motions as convective. Horizontal motions are advective. Also used to denote the presence of cumulus clouds (also known as convective clouds); most often refers to instability.

Convective temperature - The temperature to which air must be heated to generate convection solely by heating. The air will have a dry adiabatic lapse rate from the surface to the LFC.

Convective instability - The state of an unsaturated layer of air whose lapse rates of temperature and moisture are such that when lifted adiabatically to saturation, convection is spontaneous.

--ER
 
No lights! :-( Got back about 3 a.m., pooped.

--ER
 
"Aerosolius bareassus" is the active ingreditent of Ah'Sole-B-Gon. Yes.

--ER
 
*Prrrssst*
 
Chasing lights in the sky. Sounds a little X-phile-ish.
 
(Sorta sounds like an excuse for E.R. and the good Dr. E.R. to go driving in the dark to me.)
 
Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?