Aurora Borealis - Forest of Dean FHT Forum

I seem to remember seeing the Northern Lights from Drybrook round about 1946.
Are there any records to confirm this ?
Gerrym

From the American Physical Society.

I wonder if this is what you saw?

Received 28 October 1946

The meteor shower of October 9-10, 1946, produced intense ionization in the upper atmosphere. This phenomenon provides the first opportunity to calculate directly the energy required to produce an ionospheric layer. The necessary power is found to be a few watts per square kilometer, a value comfortably exceeded by the blackbody radiation of the sun in the region of 1000A.

Thanks for the information - it could be the explanation, though I distinctly remember a greenish glow in the sky looking north from our house, which seemed to last for quite a time. My father took me outside to watch and he said it was the Northern Lights. I am not positive about the date, though it was in the middle 1940s.
Gerrym

I do not remember this event in 1946 but can tell you that it happened in the 1960s and 1970s when we lived on the top of Ruardean Hill. The Aurora Borealis is caused by the sun bouncing off the ice at the North Pole. I remember it lasting for up to an hour. Absolute magic!

RSS Feed of thread