I started the Maine Aurora Borealis Watch Facebook group on October 12, 2021, because I was sitting next to my wood cook stove after one of my walkabouts checking out the sky, and there was a substorm in progress. It was only visible on camera, but, I was the only person seemingly, who I knew anyhow, who knew any of this was happening over my head. I was trying to thaw out my feet and write a post on my Facebook about what I was seeing, yet no one else was aware that they, too, could go out with their devices and witness the majesty of the Northern Lights.
I decided to do something about this. Maine may not have the massive displays visible to folks in Iceland or Scotland, since we’re in the cheap seats straddling the 45th parallel.That’s a good 20 degrees south of our friends who have turned aurora hunting into a pretty respectable economic endeavor. Still, auroras are often visible in Maine, mostly on camera, but, we can see them. Just not the big green giant pulsing light shows. Our shows are a little bit more pink and purple, more on why that is later.
In which case, some may scoff at the need for a camera, or the underwhelming display here in the Great State of Maine.
And rather underwhelmingly, I named our Facebook Group the October 12, 2021 Aurora Watch. Exactly one person joined that night.
I changed the name to the Maine Aurora Borealis Watch on August 17, 2022. I’m not sure how many members we had by then. Today, we have nearly 66,000 members, and I have four folks besides myself helping on the admin team. They work really hard and bring many skills to the group- some are great photographers, they are teachers, aurora hunters, and great people who keep me going with this work.
People really like auroras. We recently had a solar maximum, which happens every 11 years, which means that we can see more auroras on earth because the sun’s activity ramps up. We are currently in Solar Cycle 25, and we may have already reached maximum by now, but, we’ve continued to see pretty decent activity throughout the summer- perhaps because once the sun is reaching minimum, there were some really decent coronal holes that spun toward us at just the right time. Or maybe not. It can take a while to determine when, exactly, solar maximum is over, since let’s face it- the sun is quite a ways away. Roughly 150,000 million kilometers, which equates roughly to 93 million miles, and gets its own measurement designation: 1 AU, or one astronomical unit.
Given this magnitude, you can see why I sometimes get a little cheeky when someone asks me if I can tell when an aurora will be coming, because they have company on MDI next weekend. 🙂
But it’s all in good fun. I try really hard to educate people that we can forecast about three days out, based on prior solar rotations and activity and satellite observances of charged particles, however, it isn’t until an hour away from earth that we can take a swing at a real forecast, because that is when charged particles pass what I call the Last Lonely House, or the DISCOVR sattelite. But now, DISCOVR is down and probably for good, so fortunately there is another little cottage out there, the ACE/EPAM instrument.
NASA/NOAA and the EU have a few satellites out at Lagrange 1, which is located 1.5 million miles out from the earth. Mainly there for purposes of weather alerts and grid fail warnings, but also bringing us aurora forecasting information, these satellites live at LaGrange 1 because it’s easier to do so. Normally, being stuck between two orbiting celestial objects would make you a bit unbalanced from gravitational pull, but the LaGrange 1 point offers a state of equilibrium and balance. This makes orbiting a lot easier, and saves on rocket fuel. How’s that for a real estate pitch?
I am actually a real estate agent, but, don’t worry, I’m not trying to sell lots in space. But, I have managed, with the help of my admin team, to attract quite a few people to the space that is the MABW.
Since 2021, I’ve gotten on the Facebook group and written a forecast if conditions look good, and my team helps with moderation and getting everyone approved to join, since we became a private group a year or so ago.
I consider myself a Citizen Scientist. I’m not a trained scientist, though I guess I sort of am, since I have a degree in Computer Science and used to work teaching tech classes to high school kids. I was a Java programmer and web developer in a previous incarnation, and still dub around in it. But, for most of my days, I have been fascinated by the night sky, and started studying auroras before there were things like the NOAA three day forecast, and even before folks really knew what was causing them.
Citizen Science has a valid spot in the big leagues too, and I’m proud of the attention that MABW has drawn from meteorologists, public radio, and NOAA. You can’t be everywhere all at once, and citizen scientists out there in the field with their cameras have contributed greatly to the understanding of space phenomena. This is how STEVE was discovered (I know, I need to have a whole page about STEVE)- first documented on the Alberta Aurora Chasers Facebook Group in 2016.
Thanks for stopping by, and I’ll keep adding pages to the educational content, adding my archived writings and forecasts from the group, and adding new content.
If you can chip in to support this work, much appreciated.