Major Aurora Sighting!

To summarise...at 21.30 the sky was crystal clear and there was no aurora activity at all. At 22.00 the whole sky was covered with clouds which ended the watch. Conor and i met up outside afterwards to discuss the prospects. At the time the oval was green and not over us so we where getting a little disheartened. At this time the whole sky was overcast with no stars visible. It was then that we both looked to the north and got a sudden shock..there low down over the distant rooftops was 2 thick bright auroral beams cutting through the clouds like a knife! We grapped our coats and ran out to the nearby pitch for a better view, within one minute we could see 7 beams covering the sky from the west all the way to the north. Each of these where short in height however they where at least 2.5 degrees (5 moon diameters) thick, bright and green. We could tell by there morphology, texture and location that they where the vertical beams of an aurora....an obvious mild gemagnetic storm was in progress. These beams persisted for some time then graudually became very faint and diffuse as the night went on. The clouds broke and we had great clear pacthes in the north. We could see a 20 degree high green, faint band in the northern sky that was easily seen despite strong moonlight. We watched the display untill approx 01.15LT however by this stage the aurora seemed to have gone completely which was great timing as the sky became overcast again followed later by heavy showers. To put icing on the cake Conor was live on the international radio station 'Talksport' informing listeners to watch out for any further aurora activity during which he was asked to explain what an aurora was, what it looked like, how to see it and how it is caused. This was all very exciting and added to the satisfaction of the night!
We where very lucky that we went out when we did otherwise we may have missed it however the charts now confirmed a sudden burst of activity which correlated nicely with our sighting!!!

Hi Martin.

Do you mind if I repost this on the Yahoo Auroral Observing group?

groups.yahoo.com/group/auroralobserving/

Thanks.

Brian

By all means Brian please do!

I have heard of no other sightings but i suspect the window of outburt could easily have been missed.

At 3am this morning, from Tullamore/Daingean, there was no aurora to be seen. The low, bright Moon from my location may have hindered any such aurora, but still, even with relatively clear skies, no luck. Seems martin you boys are in the right place up there!

Seanie.

Thanks Seanie!

Yea after 01.00 it went dead here to and i was up before dawn and it was the same. The charts indicated that the activity was over for us by that time but earlier it really kicked off!

Hi Martin.

The charts you mention - are they the NOAA-POES charts? They're not terribly reliable, unfortunately!

Brian