"Just keep orbiting, just keep orbiting, orbit, orbit, orbit, orbit..."

[goes_sat]

Hee hee! Okay, so, I gotta say I'm sorry for not posting anything here lately. My siblings and I had a kinda St. Patrick's day festival and I think...er... I went a LITTLE heavy on absorbing energy so.. heh... yeah. Then I was fully operational yesterday and had LOADS of work to do. But I do have something fun for you and then something more

Comments

[acelightning]

Oh, poor Eight! Yes, by all means, let wcg help you out there.

On a somewhat better note, I've been meaning to ask you three if you have very much contact with POES. I look at the aurora information page several times a night, and I want to tell POES how much I appreciate the information. I saw the aurora borealis once, a very long time ago, and I've wanted to see it again ever since. It's not often visible from my latitude - a bit south of New York City - and so far, ever time it has been visible this far south, it's been too cloudy here for me to see anything! But I keep checking with POES and looking at those polar particle scans.

[wcg]

GOES-9 may be able to talk to the POES satellites, since 9 uses the Fairbanks NOAA groundstation to communicate, and so do the POES missions. Also, now that I think of it, all of the GOES satellites can talk to POES using the DCS (data collection system) which has some 18,000 or so surface weather stations in contact with NOAA's World Weather Center via the GOES network.

[acelightning]

Somehow I thought Nine would probably be the one best suited to communicating with POES.

How about it, Nine? Does your polar cousin have anything to say?

[wcg]

Since GOES-10 put a security lock on this post, I don't think 9 can see your question.

However, with respect to the aurorae, here's a wonderful little website: http://www.aurorawebcam.com/index.php

Some people in Fairbanks rigged up a webcam to record aurorae every night. Then they replay the loop during the day. It's almost frighteningly beautiful.

[acelightning]

Since all the GOES satellites share one LJ account, I can't figure out how 10 could stop 9 from seeing all of it. (But I'm not really an LJ "power user", so there might be a way I don't know about.)

Thanks for the link to the aurora cam - wow! "Frighteningly beautiful", indeed! Have you ever seen the aurora "live"? The one time I did, it was just that, and more... expressions like "awe-inspiring", "mind-boggling", and "spectacular" don't even begin to do it justice. That's why I want to see it "in person" again (and the webcam pictures only increase my desire to do so).

But it almost seems as if I'm not "meant" to. A few years ago, I took advantage of a midweek promotional travel deal and went to Iceland, hoping to see the aurora from there - and it was overcast and rainy for the whole three days! Clouds have blocked the sky every time we've had geomagnetic storms intense enough to spread the auroras this far south (note: my location is less than two miles from the facility formerly known as "Bell Labs", where the background radiation

[wcg]

I can't figure out how 10 could stop 9 from seeing all of it.

Neither can I. But since she put that "Switching to Secure mode" tag up there in the original post I'm figuring there's some trick that makes it possible. Maybe she'll show all this to 9 later, when she breaks the news to him. But I wouldn't bet on it. Probably better for you to ask him in a comment to a post you know he has access to.

Have you ever seen the aurora "live"?

Once, very low on my northern horizon, and amazingly enough from Texas! It was not the vivid green thing I see in the aurora cam though. More a dull, pulsing red. I'd like to see it sometime from New York state or Canada, if things work out that way.

Are you living near the Bell Labs (Lucent) facility at Murray Hill New Jersey? One of my colleagues at Towson University used to work there, where so much of the history of 20th century physics occured.

[acelightning]

The one time I saw the aurora - from central New Hampshire - it was "dull, pulsing red" also, but it was still deeply moving. I'd love to see the formations that look like colossal curtains in the sky, slowly rippling in the solar wind. I know that all the photos and videos I've seen, no matter how beautiful, just can't do it justice.

I live near the Bell Labs/Lucent/Avaya/whatever-they're-calling-it-this-week facility in Holmdel, with the water tank built to resemble the first transistors. There's still stuff going on in there, albeit at a much reduced scale than in former times.

[acelightning]

Oh, and how could I forget SOHO? That data is part of it too!

[goes_sat]

That's a great idea! I'll tell him and start chatting up my POES cousins. *grin*

<3,
10

[acelightning]

Maybe POES can explain to me what some of those readings mean?