Northern Lights

[shootingstar]

Recently at work, via a daily fun intranet poll, there was a question asking employees if anyone saw northern lights.

I was amazed that out of 800+ employees who responded, over 70% had seen aurora bourealis!
Now it's easier to see northern lights on the prairies as one goes further and further north. We don't get them (or if we do, is very rare) within our city area. But I realize several hundred km. north of us, if one is lucky one might see them.

Like seeing a whale or 2 on the pacific coast: it's not guaranteed at all. And for northern lights, there's no typical migration season where the whales hang out in the same area.

Have you seen northern lights?

[Crankin]

Yes, when I was a kid, here in Massachusetts. I can't remember seeing them as an adult.

[Artista]

We saw the northern lights in Denver Colorado about 10 years ago. That's pretty far south but I've heard that they've appeared as far south as Albuquerque New Mexico.

[salsabike]

Yes, at 30,000 feet out the window of an airplane going over Newfoundland, on the way from New York to London, in December 2003. Such an amazing experience! Like watching huge ribbons and curtains blowing around in the sky. We were incredibly lucky to see the Northern Lights that way and I'll never forget it.

[eofelis]

I saw them when I was a kid in New England. Maybe the same ones that Crankin saw.
The first was in the late 1970s when I was in southeastern NH. It looked like a shimmering greenish curtain.
Then again in the mid 1980s in northestern MA. It looked like a yellowish glowing orb.

I have not seen them since.
Last year when there was a chance they might be seen at about the I-70-ish latitude we did drive out west just to the CO/UT line where it is dark, but we did not see them.

[lph]

I travel a fair bit within Norway, mostly due to work, and up North you're almost guaranteed to see them if it's a clear winter's night. But the sighting that made the most impression on me was here in Oslo. I was out skiing alone one evening and wasn't expecting to see anything as it's not that common this far south - and was treated to a fantastic display over the entire sky, complete with a "red crown", one of the rarest. Very beautiful, and awe-inspiring :-)