Ooops.

91

 Four days since my last sighting, frustratingly I was down with a bad back. I missed at least one night. Managed to get back in tow now tho with a display last night that showed very well against the strong moon light.

90

A thin show starting out tonight but there is time yet. Nice ring about the moon tho !

89

88

88 came up fast last night only to drop back as fast. Two brief views on consecutive nights. Conditions are still elivated and the EPAM looks good. Roll on darkness.

A wee photostream of the last few nights.

87 Just crept over the horizon. I dont know if its going to clear enough to get a propper view tho.

The rest of the catch up

The night after the CME produced another small show as a precurser to the morning of the eclipse. Needless to say although it was a little cloudy the almost total eclipse was a spectacular affair. The night produced another display that was seen a long way south, a great day !! The next night produced the curious blob as a rogue ribbon of light  pusated from the eastern side of the sky overhead and off to the south south west. The ribbon was actualy south of us !! The night of the 22 produced the start of a display before being lost to the cloud....So thats all up to date at 86. its been a cracking week in to the equniox and tonight we are missing storming conditions to the cloud cover.....I feel a photo stream coming on......

Catching up a bit.

81 showed little more than a difuse show on the horizon before dropping back to show later in the night. 82 came storming in to produce the biggest show this year. The awaited CME produced aurora that was seen all over the UK. We suffered like a lot of places with mist and fog. Unfortunatly it seemed to suck the colour out of the sky. The display was massive tho with hours of bands passing overhead fading and growing. Ocasionaly it would stop moving and seem to fall out the sky in a coronal display that would go on and on.. A great night even with the conditions......83 is on right now as im typing. Theres a lot of cloud obscuring it but its showing green to higher than 50 deg !!!....theres more of the update to come tonight.

80

Waiting for a storming display thats not happening by the look of it. It seems the x flare cme passed us by. Still its a good night and we havecolour so we will see what will be !!

79

We are in reasonably exciting times just now. Of course if you start to think like that it seems you are doing nothing but preparing your self for yet another long stand in the cold with an anti climax in the end. Over the nights of the10^th and 11^th I was hoping for a glancing blow from an earlier CME. Over the last two nights the positive magnetic field has pushed almost everything away from us and there has been almost nothing to be seen. Ironicaly we have had a couple of the finest clearest nights you could wish for. Even the huge moon is rising later and helping to give us nice dark skys from the off. EPAM has risen but there is so much going on I think it is more of a harbinger of current flare activity happening now. The previous few days have seen 2297 producing continuous flaring with loads of C class, several strong M class, some of which produced coronal mass ejections and while not coming directly at us are expected to have some influence. last night the one we are all waiting for an X2.2 with a CME came ripping out followed by another M class. NOAA has a storm warning in place now and they are expecting potential effects from the Ms to scrape past us and stir the pot. 2297 Is now coming in to a position where it will be fully geo effective. It still maintains a complicated magnetic structure which is good because it means there is still some potential for more very big flares as it really starts to face us. We are about to feel the effects of an incoming HSS from a recurring equatorial hole CH658. Hopefully the high speed solar wind and the clouds of plasma will cook up something for us. All kitchen analogies aside I am really hoping that this is one pot that will boil over on the stove.......With all that said we all know fine there are no givens in this game. Many of you will have stood here before, X flare hurling towards us with the UK press hyping it and expectations sky high so lets be realistic. There is the potential for lights over the next two nights, maybe even more. As the last two nights and other X events as well have shown it is just as easy for all of this to simply bounce off the magnetic field and carry on past us, and after all this is what the planets magnetic field does so well, protect us from this dangerous shit. That aside I am some looking forwards to darkness. The game may just be afoot.

78

It seems like ages since I managed some colour but tonight with a breal in the endless clouds and the big moon yet to rise I managed to catch this difuse aurora. Stats are really poor and once the moon started to take hold there was little for my poor old camera to pull out. Im just waiting noe and going to seed if the field comes south for a bit and go for it again....Its really thin stuff out there.

There are storm warnings for the weekend this weekend due to a HS SSBC. Last night was a wash out and probably had the best show, tonight is less active but there is a faint arc visable. At the moment im waiting for some expansion.