Sue and I both saw our first Aurora Borealis last night – I didn’t take my SLR camera so the header picture isn’t one of mine it’s from here. What we saw was more like this, but it was still a wonderful experience.
A few people have asked how we knew about it, it simple, Twitter and Facebook on my iPhone.
Both Twitter and Facebook are excellent alerting capabilities and when combined with an ever-present mobile phone there’s no excuse for not knowing.
I use two sources of information, and subscribe to both of them in both Facebook and Twitter because I’m a bit of a belt and braces person:
AuroraWatch UK
Aurora Alerts
What you have to know about this alerts site is the relevant Kp number for you – this map will help – the bigger it is the more active the Aurora. For my location a Kp above 5 is interesting but it really needs to be higher than that; last night was a 6.67 at its height.
There’s also the excellent Virtual Astro on Twitter who will keep you up to date about everything that’s going on in the sky particularly over the UK. They definitely had the best selection of pictures.
Graham Chastney 