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Title text:
I've had countless nights where the line never left the bottom zone of the graph, but the few moments where it's climbed all the way to the top have made up for them all.
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3196/
I really hope to see them sometime. Whenever we’re in Quebec and there’s a good geomagnetic storm the weather is cloudy.
Not sure where you are but apparently tonight is a good night for them across Canada! I’m going to wander out later and see what I can see.
Unfortunately I’m about 13° latitude farther south, so it’s much harder to see them normally
You'll see them when we get enrolled to fight on Greenland.
Same in Saskatoon. We seem to miss all the good night sky experiences.
I'm from Iceland and this pretty much checks out. Pro tip, renting a cabin with a hot tub on days with good conditions is really good. Also travel with people who smoke so they go out and check on a regular basis.
The only northern lights I've ever seen were in Iceland. Honestly, the conditions were less than ideal and what I did see was very dim to the naked eye.
What a lot of people don't know is that a camera (like on your phone) picks up even the faintest aurora with ease. I have pictures that make the whole thing look many times more vibrant than what I could see.
Very accurate.
When we had the northern lights here, we pulled over on the way to the dark-sky location, and the aurora filled the sky.
After it died back a bit, we drove on to the dark-sky, where we spent 3 hours sitting in the dark working out if the green bits were going to spike up again.
This is good to know. I’ve seen the aurora once and it was like the bottom of the graph describes it - a very faint glow, barely noticeable to the naked eye, but it turned up much better in photos.
Ideally you want to be out in a rural area, far from city lights.
This is accurate. The best I ever saw lasted about 2 minutes, after hours of sitting watching basically nothing. Everyone else had long gone inside but I still had my camera set. Absolutely worth sitting alone on a hillside, it was by far the most amazing thing I've ever witnessed.
It also helps to let your eyes accustom to the dark, IIRC 45 minutes is ideal.
My best aurora experience took place in August, oddly enough. It was a warm night, so I went out on the deck and laid on the chaise lounge, my big cat of the time flopped out on my chest. The moon was about 3/4 full and for some reason a small prop plane was circling overhead (there's a flight school out at the airport, probably it was from there). Then I saw the ghostly curtain of an aurora to the north. Very poetic experience.
My tip: don't bother!