What is the Aurora Watcher's Guide?
I plan that this will be a helpful source of information for anyone with an interest in seeing the Aurora for themselves.
Recently the Sun has been in the news as it approaches another period of maximum activity. This, along with a lot of media attention, has stirred interest in the most visible product of the active Sun - the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights.
Social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, have provided a means by which people interested in seeing the aurora can link up with like minded others. It has also provided a means for those with knowledge and experience of the science behind the aurora to communicate with the general public. There are services out there that provide real-time predictions of where you can see the aurora from, whether aurora is occurring right now and what the chances of seeing aurora may be in the near future. There are also keen amateurs with lots of insight into the best times and places for seeing the aurora.
There are also a few down-sides to these advances. The glut of information can be confusing, especially when it might conflict. Twitter, for example, can act as an amplifier for information that is wrong as well as right. Incorrect information can propagate just as easily as good advice and the people offering it can be well intentioned, but just wrong. Correcting that information can be hard, and due to the ephemeral nature of social media, it can disappear under a mass of new information. That also means that the same questions get asked over and over again.
I hope that the Aurora Watcher's Guide will become a useful repository that people can point to in order to answer many of these questions. Keep your eye both on the posts that appear on the front-page as well as the list of pages in the side bar.
What isn't the Aurora Watcher's Guide?
This site is independent. I used to work for Lancaster University who run the Aurorwatch UK service and I still occasionally contribute on their Facebook page. However, this site is not affiliated with that service or Lancaster University. Neither is it connected to my current day job.
No comments:
Post a Comment