At the pole you see aurora's 100% of the time they occur, the further south of the pole you go the percentage goes down. At our latitude you see them about 50% of the time they occur, as I recall.
I do remember at last solar maximum (1999-2000) I saw them frequently and they were reported being seen in Mexico for first time in decades. Checking the web when I got home for images of the auroral oval
(http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/pmap) I found why we saw no aurora: It's waaaaay to the north of us.
But like Steve said it was still a fun outing. Weather was mild, skies had lots of stuff to look at, the ladies from Park City were a hoot and that rising Moon and it's reflection in the water were beautiful. I just hope some of the pictures get posted to the web soon (hint, hint!).
In other sky news, I returned home to find a friend had posted a video of one of my other "sky adventures" to the web:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_y48HObrTM
Anyone care to join me next time? :)
Cheers!
patrick
On 04 Aug 2010, at 02:33, Steve FISHER wrote:
Kim:
Looks like I'm one of the first to make it back from Exit 84. We did not see any trace of aroura. We ended up with about fifteen or twenty people just off the freeway far enough not to be bothered by freeway lights. Many of the people were on their first outing with SLAS or any one from Utah Astronomy. Some got Patrick's number from a schedule and asked him what was up tonight. They drove down from Park City and went to the desert with us. Great night, Southern skies cleared and we did a lot of binocular observing. When the moon showed up it was a beautiful and surprising sight. It looked like a shark fin as it rose above the mountain. Still no aurora though. Steve
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