Thursday, October 18, 2007
Northern Lights Are North
One thing I miss from growing up on the farm is going outside at night and being able to see trillions of stars overhead. And at certain times of the year being able to watch the northern lights that seemed to be almost overhead. They were like large fingers of lights constantly moving and changing like God's laser beams. Of course back then, laser lights were unheard of.
A local weather person said this evening around midnight would be ideal for observing the northern lights as they were about to put on a spectacular display. Naturally northern lights are towards the north, and since a lot of people today are not direction oriented, instructions were given to find north. It was said if you face approximately where the sun sets and extend your right arm that would be the northerly direction where the northern lights would be.
I am thinking that is kind of neat, never heard that before. So I go out on my deck and try it just to see how accurate it would be. I face the direction where the sun sets and extend my right arm. Then I look in that direction. Boy does it work. Are those lights ever bright as I look towards the northern sky. A little bit blueish and a lot of amber.
For you see I am looking directly at a street light. And in the distance about half a block away directly in line is another street light. I expect that no one in the city or urban area will see much of the northern lights because we have so much over powering light pollution. Everywhere and in every direction all you see is artificial light all night long.
Light pollution is world wide. Take a look at this NASA picture and see how bright the world has become because of artificial light. And this is a 2001 picture. Imagine what it is like now.
City people, good luck on finding the northern lights. Country folk, you might be just lucky enough to have enough darkness to see them.
-=One Day At A Time=-
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This work by NSCAVE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
A local weather person said this evening around midnight would be ideal for observing the northern lights as they were about to put on a spectacular display. Naturally northern lights are towards the north, and since a lot of people today are not direction oriented, instructions were given to find north. It was said if you face approximately where the sun sets and extend your right arm that would be the northerly direction where the northern lights would be.
I am thinking that is kind of neat, never heard that before. So I go out on my deck and try it just to see how accurate it would be. I face the direction where the sun sets and extend my right arm. Then I look in that direction. Boy does it work. Are those lights ever bright as I look towards the northern sky. A little bit blueish and a lot of amber.
For you see I am looking directly at a street light. And in the distance about half a block away directly in line is another street light. I expect that no one in the city or urban area will see much of the northern lights because we have so much over powering light pollution. Everywhere and in every direction all you see is artificial light all night long.
Light pollution is world wide. Take a look at this NASA picture and see how bright the world has become because of artificial light. And this is a 2001 picture. Imagine what it is like now.
City people, good luck on finding the northern lights. Country folk, you might be just lucky enough to have enough darkness to see them.
-=One Day At A Time=-
RSS Feed : Get the Rose Garden updates automatically with your RSS feed reader.
It's easy, Just drag the icon from the address bar to your feed reader, or click on 'Subscribe to Posts' in the right hand menu.
Labels: light pollution, northern lights
This work by NSCAVE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
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