Who has ever seen the Milky Way?

Black And White Waves GIF by Feliks Tomasz Konczakowski
 
Most people don't completely understand that all of those colours are nowhere near as vivid
or sharp with the naked eye. It is a camera set with a long exposure that makes those different
hues pop and seem more striking than you would see in person. You just don't see that level
of Green and Purple unless your eye has a 30 to 60 second exposure setting. :LOL:

Also, it is never frozen and is in constant flux and motion. I am far enough North that I have witnessed
them reach out directly overheard from the North. They are more like Waves, to me. :idk

I have also woken people up to witness them because I am so excited and they are all like, "Meh,
it wasn't that big of a deal." :facepalm
 
I spent some time doing work at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks as they have a supercomputing facility there.

They also have a monitoring station there that gives you forecast on the Aurora. Now that I think about it… It’s probably on the Internet these days.

It’s kind of cool to go see but you realize you’re getting the shit radiated out of yourself.

Receipts
 
fretworn said:
Cloudy last night … 🤨

FYI when you see the aurora borealis, you’re getting saturated with HE particles like alpha, gamma, etc.
Click to expand...
Even flight crews need to monitor their exposure levels because of how much higher they spend in the atmosphere on a regular basis inside of aircraft.

The new solar cycle has been popping the last 18 months. A lot of solar storms, CME and radio blackouts. I've had no less than 15 notifications over the last 3 days. It was getting annoying so I turned off my alerts for now.

I'm not operating in a way where it's critical that I have that information available regularly at this point.
 
The night sky has a certain association for me that 30 years on I've still not shifted;

When I was a kid (4 to 7 years old) I lived in Australia, and we had a couple of family holidays that involved long, long drives through the outback. I remember looking up at the night sky from the dark back seat of the car and being amazed by the stars, my little mind getting lost between the vast dark desert and the riot of constellations overhead as my little brothers slept and the car seemed to just hang in space.

One of the reasons I didn't like coming back to England; there are just less stars in the northern hemisphere. And it's cloudy so often. And it's shit. Fuck England.


Scotland, however, has saved the day on occasion. In March 2020 we stayed in an old hunting lodge, far up a remote valley in the highlands west of Inverness. There was one particularly cold, clear night. The air was crisp, and as soon as we stepped outside and turned out the lights we could see everything - it was like our eyes instantly adjusted. Every star, every satellite sailing overhead, it was astounding.
 
Closest I've ever come was looking through a pair of night vision goggles. Not great, but definitely not even close to the naked eye.
 
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