My parents live north of Chelan in the mountains, and some nights I can see the aurora, and it’s like heaven.

It’s a little close to Idaho but what can you do?

Will it be visible tonight too?

Will let you know soon, I have friends that love it though and others have hat moved elsewhere for a better job.

Yes. I like the rain and being left alone

Amazing pic!

There's an app called Aurora that will push you notifications if you configure it to.

20-25 year warranty. Functional longer.

Yes I do. I love the beauty of the land .

What’s the warranty or expected lifetime of the system/solar panels? If you saved $120/mo on your electric bill, it looks like it will take a little over 17 years to break even on the installation costs.

I’m just curious because I talked to a solar company and they told me the break even point in Washington is around 10 years (based on their math, which is probably biased) because our weather isn’t great for generating solar power.

You can drive up to hurricane ridge, but it's a ski area right now because it's covered in snow. All of the lower elevation trails are going to be open, so Lake crescent area, solduc area, the high rainforest, and anywhere along the coast are going to be mostly snow free. Though it did just snow out here and there was some snow around Lake crescent (I was out there Saturday ) but no more than a melting inch.

It's not quite as simple as "There's an aurora in your area", more that it'll alert you when there's significant event that could generate them. There's a graphic on that page that shows aurora forecast plots.

As for alerts, you can follow the 'subscribe' tab along the top bar. You can select a lot of alerts, but what you probably only really care about are the very high K-index alerts. When you get one, check that page and look at the aurora forecast, and if it's dipping into or close to your location it might be worth going outside and looking north.

Thanks! I found it hard to navigate and understand how I would sign up for an alert when there would be aurorae in my area, tho - can you eli5?

Double +1 for Spaceweather!!

https://www.spaceweather.com

Thank you!!!

https://www.spaceweather.com

Thank you. Seems to be a pay-for service tho, and I am cheap!

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

You can sign up for email alerts that will ping you whenever the geomagnetic K-index gets high enough. It tripped a few times last night.

I live in Port Townsend, right on the fault. It is what it is.

spaceweather.com. If you’re really into auroras, you can subscribe to get text alerts when there are active storms. I knew about last night’s activity, but didn’t have time to get to a spot with dark and clear skies to see it.

The aurora is still pretty active right now. There’s more solar stuff incoming, tonight and possibly tomorrow could be good chances to see it.

Thanks!

I do astro regularly. 30 seconds is too long if you're using a zoom lens, but with milky way photography and a wide angle lens, there's no noticeable streaking. I didn't miss your sarcasm. 👍

30 seconds is way to long and causes streaking of stars, also you seemed to have missed the sarcasm in the previous post so il edit to /s to make it easier!

This was a single shot exposed for ten seconds. Standard astro photos are exposed for thirty seconds. If we were limited to one second exposures, astrophotography wouldn't exist. 🙂 This was a particularly strong storm that was visible as far south as Nevada.

Indeed! when using an overexposure everything is visible from anywhere!