3196: Aurora Coolness

Aurora Coolness

|< < Prev #3196 (January 19, 2026)

Title text: I've had countless nights where the line never left the bottom zone of the graph, but the few moments where it's climbed all the way to the top have made up for them all.

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Explanation

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This is one of 60 incomplete explanations: This page was created by CHARGING PARTICLES. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

This comic is similar to 2914: Eclipse Coolness, in which the occurrence of truly-interesting ("cool") events is reported as a function of location; the graph reports that most of the interesting stuff happens close to the path of totality, with the event elsewhere reported as boring. The graph in this comic reports events as a function of time, and it shows that truly interesting events during an aurora are fairly frequent and are not predictable. Both the caption and the title text encourage the viewer of an aurora to be patient with the 'boring' stuff, as more exciting events could happen with little or no notice. The caption gives general advice, while the title text reports Randall's own experiences.

Randall has previously (2233: Aurora Meaning) established that auroras are "cool" when they occur at subpolar latitudes, including the latitude of eastern Massachusetts, where Randall resides.

The comic was published at around the time when low-latitude auroras were particularly anticipated to be visible, and may even have been displaying themselves to Randall in the immediate run-up to publication — unless, as indicated by the comic (and title text) it was mainly the anticipation of this that was exciting, with any eventual brief sighting merely being icing upon the proverbial cake.

Transcript

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This is one of 37 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

[A graph of “aurora coolness” over many hours. The coolness starts at “visible glow on the horizon, color only visible in photos” and gradually moves up and down to “spectacular ribbons of color spanning the sky and illuminating the landscape”, which is is labeled “5 or 10 minutes”, then gradually goes back down, almost getting all the way up, and eventually ending back at “visible glow on the horizon, color only visible in photos”.]

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Discussion

second - 45.178.1.151 03:07, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

minute 82.13.184.33 09:31, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

hour Caliban (talk) 10:24, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

I picture people going out on a cold, clear winter night to stare at a shimmering, aurora-filled sky, and then returning to their warm homes to sip hot cups of soup from the microwave, blissfully unaware of how closely related the two events are ... or would be were it not for that thin, thin, layer of mostly diatomic and triatomic gases that is desperately parrying the Sun's murderous assault on our behalf. Yes, yes, I know, I know ...2605:59C8:160:DB08:657A:CBF1:9BDA:C5C 04:07, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Makes you wonder why no-one's figured out how to reproduce that in a microwave, so we can enjoy an aurora every time we heat something. 82.13.184.33 09:34, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

The graph in 2914 isn't a function of time, it's a function of how close one is to the path of totality. 137.25.230.78 05:39, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Fixed. 2605:59C8:160:DB08:657A:CBF1:9BDA:C5C 06:38, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

New England was getting heavy snow in the days leading up to this comic, so it was probably too cloudy for any auroras to be visible. Barmar (talk) 05:42, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

"probably too cloudy" Far north coast of Maine, all I could see was sky-glow from the Walmart 7 miles away. We actually have a Dark Sky movement in this area (lotta old hippies) but Walmart didnt get that memo. --PRR (talk) 06:02, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Indeed. I live about 50km from London in a town with many street lights (and I don't drive). I've never seen an aurora.--2A00:23CC:D248:8901:8DF8:31D:D8B:3B99 09:09, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

I wish all those many people who apparently get notified about aurora forecasts, go outside and then AFTERWARDS post about it instead posted about it BEFORE… I keep seeing such posts when it's too late. :( Fabian42 (talk) 06:53, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is a UK-specific phenomenon, so it may not be familiar to many of you, but those who do do this ("do do" – snigger), stop it. I refer to banging on about how spectacular the aurora is but not mentioning that it couldn't be seen with the naked eye. If you can only see it by pointing your camera at it, that's not seeing it. That's not worthy of BBC journalists saying the aurora was visible, because it wasn't. That's a cute trick that your phone can do to translate invisible parts of the spectrum into visible light. You don't post UV-detector shots of patterns that birds can see and say "Wow, conditions were perfect for making these patterns visible on this lizard!" If it's not visible, it's not visible. Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 10:55, 20 January 2026 (UTC)
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