2015/16 Armchair Aurora watching

[GloriaSmud]

A new thread all ready for the coming Aurora season (hopefully I've included all the websites that were used before!)

Spaceweather (all space news including Aurora forecasts)
Icelandic metoffice (Aurora forecasts for Iceland)

Webcams (hopefully those not working yet will come online soon)
Icelandic webcams
Hotelranga (Icelandic Hotel)
Alaska Auroracam
Alaska aurora ‘movie
Aurora service (European webcams)
Aurora service (New Zealand/Tasmania webcams)
South Pole webcam
Abisko
Porjus1
Porjus3
ISS livestream

Recently found this one one so might/might not have Aurora ~ The University of Tromsø

Shetland webcams here, here and here.

Wikipedia entry on Aurora colours

Lucky you!

Beautiful! Thanks for photos.

If you have clear skies tonight down to Midlands I'd go somewhere dark and have a look, either naked eye or through a camera.

I'm assuming you have to look north for the lights? We are off somewhere with dark skies later this week.

Most of the webcams seem to be suffering from cloudy weather Abisko looks like it might burst into life at any minute though.

Wow an amazing night if FB and Twitter are anything to go by. Photo evidence of aurora at St. Albans! South Herts! Which is 20 mins from me but of course DD is poorly so I couldn't go on a drive and the attached is from the exact spot in NI where I tried to see the lights this time last year (Craigavon). Also good pics from Norfolk where I have also failed to see the lights....

How long is this raised level of activity likely to go on for? Does anyone who has seen them in the UK have tips for seeing them?

You need to be away from towns and cities because there is too much light pollution. Also, the less moonlight the better.

Sadly, where we live there is far too much light pollution to see any aurora activity.

How far from towns? Would 5-10 miles do it?

I live 5 miles away from a large town and we have way too much light pollution. You can see an orange haze in the sky.

This link shows aurora over Uttoxeter last night www.flickr.com/photos/richardholmesphotography/23509176149/in/photostream

This Twitter feed shows a good range of locations, for example 5 miles out of Beverly mobile.twitter.com/VirtualAstro?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

I screen grabbed some of the pics for later posters.

And now for the attachment...

The Uttoxeter photo link upthread is interesting, because it shows the urban lights/glow in the foreground and yet the lights are still visible.

Here's one from Abisko last night.

The Uttoxeter photo is amazing. Maybe we could see it from where we live if it was strong enough then.

Fabulous pictures there.
Why doesn't aurora occur when I'm in some of these places? I've been to both Yorkshire and the North Wales coast this year and nothing's happened. It isn't faaaaiiiirrr.

I just searched on "aurora" on Twitter. There are pictures from Lincolnshire and Norfolk last night. You just need to go outdoors and look up in the sky, Gloria.

Here are the Lincolnshire ones to really rub salt in Gloria's wounds.

And the attachment (again!)

According to the AA, I'm only 40ish miles from Uttoxeter. There must be somewhere in Leicestershire I can go that's far from light to see something, even if it's a faint glow in the sky!

We drove to darker spot last night and sat until we got too cold. Saw nothing even remotely aurora-ish. Just seen the Uttoxeter picture and am gutted. 10 miles down the road from where we were! How come we saw nothing?

Aw FadedRed ~ how disappointing

Thanks for the tissues, Gloria, appreciated.

We've had unseasonably warm weather here. It's meant a lot of cloud cover. However, temperatures have finally dropped to around -20 and the clouds are gone. Here's a snap a friend took two nights ago.

That's fab Moose - though I am now very envious.

Am I right in thinking you are in Canada? The weather is disgustingly warm here in the UK too - between 12-14C the last few days in our city, which is what we experienced in high summer in Iceland a couple of summers ago and here in the UK this July (though unseasonably cold then). Urgh. Hope the weather here settles into something more seasonably normal soon. I'm getting to the point when I am wondering if we'll see a frost this winter.