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https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/news/view/370/20190120-coronal-hole-faces-earth
Our automated coronal hole detection system did its job and detected the coronal hole
[...]
Compared to the previous rotation we can conclude that this coronal hole has ever so slightly increased in size. When the coronal hole solar wind stream passed STEREO Ahead a couple of days ago (a satellite in orbit around the Sun now located on the east side of the Sun as seen from Earth) we saw an increase in the solar wind speed to about 600km/s but only a modest increase in the parameters that make up the interplanetary magnetic field.
[...]
The solar wind stream is likely to arrive at our planet either late on the 22nd (Tuesday) or early on the 23rd of January which would be Wednesday.
At best, any aurora from this activity might dip below Canada and into far-northern US.
Have you ever seen an aurora? What online resources have you found helpful in getting aurora predictions for your area?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Sunday January 27 2019, @01:49PM
We get weak, interesting auroras here in northern Montana. They happen more often than you'd think; but because they are weak, most people don't notice them. For several years, I went out and did some low-light photography with the specific goal of catching what there was to catch; the results are in this album. [flickr.com] I also built a short time-lapse of one event; you can see that here. [flickr.com]
Strong auroras that are easily visible to the non-acclimated eye (by acclimated, I mean being out in a truly dark sky area for at least an hour) are fairly rare here, though I have seen a few. With the currently low solar activity, they aren't very likely. It will be years before they are again. You can check out the trend of solar activity here. [noaa.gov] More sunspots correlate strongly with more and stronger auroras. So do events like coronal mass ejections and coronal holes like the one mentioned in TFS. Basically the more the earth's magnetic field is disturbed, the stronger the auroras get. These solar events tend to cause exactly this type of disruption.
Resources have varied over time; these days, the first place I go to is NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center. [noaa.gov] They have a current aurora display model, which basically tells you about naked-eye visible — or IOW, strong — auroras. Weak auroras are often found well outside the edges of what this display model indicates, however.
The planetary K-index graph at the same site is more generally useful for predicting weak auroral activity. You have to get a feel for what it takes to create a weak aurora for your latitude, and that takes observation while knowing what the K-index is; once you know that, you can keep track of the K-index and go out and shoot or observe based on nothing but that and be reasonably successful.
For weak auroras you need a true dark-sky location. That leaves out almost all of eastern half of the USA. You can get a sense of where good observations can be made from a dark sky map like this one. [darksitefinder.com]
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