Aurora borealis 2004

Aurora Borealis Apr-Dec 2004

Spring 2004 did not show any big auroras before light summer skies prevented further observing. Images re44733-re44831 were recorded during the close encounter of Venus and Pleiades 3/4Apr. The following four images are also from April skies. September did light up a few faint arches but again nothing big. Low activity continued also all October.

During the second week of November a huge sun spot ejected material towards earth from numerous X-flares and from more than 10 strong M-flares, but as expected, Finland was cloudy practically during all of the radiation storms. This was extremely frustrating, as any aurora observer knows: the net is full of data of huge auroral storms but there is no clear sky in the range of 1000 kms! Something minor I could get in the end of the active 5 days' stormy period (images re45414-re46142 are from night 9/10Nov; these images are not in strictly chronological order). I had some good skies in the early evening that night (auroras on calm water), but 90 minutes before a major light show fog cloud crawled from sea. After an hour's wait I picked up gear and started driving to the only possible direction (in archipelago there is usually only one way out) and suddenly - after 7 kms drive - a lit sky emerged behind the thinning fog cloud. Minutes were hectic when trying to find an open place to stop, but I ran out of time and got only 30 seconds to photograph. During these seconds I could record only a couple of coronas before the storm subsided (re45933 and 45931).

Images starting from re46151 were recorded 11/12 Dec.