Northern lights, now - 11:00PM

Any night owls reading this might want to take a look at the sky - there is a northern lights show on right now. I watched for about 15 minutes just now. At first they may just look like high clouds, but get dark adapted and you can see that they are dancing around. Only white so far, but some good rays and some pulses running across the sky. In Seattle they have been directly overhead and to the NW to NE. The best way to see them is with a slightly unfocused stare. Enjoy!

Thanks, Charles.  I've been watching the cloudcover glow here in Bellingham, but no direct sightings just yet.  I suppose that there are advantages to living in places where it doesn't rain all the time...even if this means that skiing is worthless by July.  <br><br>Edited to add: suddenly, a break in the clouds. Faint, but unmistakable white rays and curtains covering the whole sky. Pretty nice, for a rainy night in November.

It's raining there? Here, it is totally clear. I just watched some more, and they are even better - pulses of energy ripping across the sky. This is one of the most active displays I've seen.

Was raining earlier, cloudy all day, now clouds in the north with hazy clearing elsewhere. You're right: this is a particularly nice display, definitely the nicest I've seen in Bellingham. Big sweeping pulses covering the entire visible sky, seeming most powerful just south of overhead and down towards the southern horizon (which in itself is sort've odd). Some definite green mixed in as well.<br><br>I went out looking for awake neighbors and finally found two. Banged on their door to let them know. They were quite appreciative.

Thanks so much for posting about this. I happened to be surfing the web & saw your post. I've never seen the northern lights before so needless to say, it's been QUITE a treat!<br><br>It's nice & clear up here in Everett. Unfortunately, it only somewhat shows up on my camcorder when using the Nightshot exposure setting with the shutter delay. Kind of like a videophone broadcast from Bagdad.

They are still going strong, but I'm not. Plus, some fog has drifted over and obscured them. I'm glad others got to enjoy them!

That's interesting. I was looking at the sky more like 8:30 PM from where I'm at in Woodinville, at something that sure looked like an aurura. I wasn't sure if that was genuine aurora or not, because there was just the start of a ground fog. Sometimes that ground fog makes an effect that looks just like aurora, because as the fog is rising and falling, any light that's coming in sideways into that moving fog (like city glow) then partially refracts down and appears with a ribbony shimmery effect much like what I've heard an aurora looks like. I've seen the ground fog thing several times now (mostly out in places like Methow) but never genuine aurora. This time it did look a lot more like what I would have expected an aurora to look like, and the fog was very very thin, so I'll take your report as corroboration that I wasn't getting faked out again