The Aurora Zone Blog

Northern Lights update: how is the autumn season looking?

Ali Mclean

Wednesday, 04 September 2019

 Auroras Jerisjarvi web 2 002 2

If you’ve been following our blogs, you’ll know that we’ve been banging on about Coronal Holes and Equinox Cracks for months now, hopefully with good reason.

To quickly recap, Coronal Holes release Solar Wind and, Equinox Cracks funnel that wind towards Earth’s atmosphere. This is particularly the case in the weeks around the Autumnal and Vernal Equinoxes and scientific research has shown that the Geomagnetic activity which creates the Northern Lights is historically highest around the Equinoxes.

As darkness has returned to the night skies north of the Arctic Circle, we have been eagerly looking for signs that Auroral activity is on the rise and, the past few days have been hugely encouraging.

All across Northern Europe and even as far south as Scotland, the Northern Lights have been dancing across the night skies. We’ve had photos and videos coming in from our excited guides in Finland and Sweden as anticipation of another great season grows daily.

If these displays are anything to go by it seems likely that the Autumn Equinox will again deliver some excellent Auroral displays.

It may also be worth noting that the Coronal Hole that released the latest Solar Winds did the same during its last Solar rotation. This suggests that it may well be sufficiently stable to come around again and provide more displays towards the end of September.

As ever, it’s in the lap of Mother Nature but there are certainly reasons for optimism. In fact, we saw those reasons in the night sky over the weekend!

Torassieppi - 1st September 2019, captured by Antti Pietikainen:

 Auroras Jerisjarvi web 3 002 2

Auroras Jerisjarvi web 002 2 2 2

 

Menesjarvi - 31st August 2019, captured by Timo Halonen: 

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 Aurora 31.8.2019 2 timo

 

Brandon Lodge - 31st August 2019, captured by Graeme Richardson:

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GJR 9653GraemeRichardson2019 Aug 311 002 2

 

Click here to view our autumn Northern Lights holidays. 

Read 1685 times Last modified on Tuesday, 10 September 2019

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