Early 2012

[Bill W]

Hi,
Nearly there once again!
I had an absolutely beautiful night last night. I was checking the meteor camera at around 03.30UT and had a quick glance around the sky before hitting the sack again. The sun was about 6.3 degrees below the horizon at that time so it was very bright already, no nlc seen.
Won't be long though.
Cheers,
Bill.

[ediacara]

I can hardly wait for the season to begin!
Bill, what's your opinion, is the closing solar maximum strong enough to vanish or at least to significantly weaken this year's NLC season?

[sonic]

Hi to you both, I was gonna ask when its time to create a thread for The 2012 NLC Season?! Actually the reason I'm thinking about it is because of the Venus transit at sunrise on the morning of the 6th June (UK), and thinking we will be on NLC watch as well... just need the weather to play fair ....

[Bill W]

Hi,

Its really good to see people starting to check in again.

That's a really hard question! The current theory of increased solar activity leading to decreased NLC is still subject to the usual statistical issues so in truth I don't know but it'll make the coming seasons more interesting!

There have been some really spectacular displays over the past few years so if we don't get that sort of intensity over the next couple of seasons (with all the coverage there now is) then that might suggest something is changing in the radiation balance.

This is the great beauty of having a really large observers group and active forum like this one. Taken together we have a huge database to use.

Regarding the "2012" opening I was speaking to Tom over the weekend and he was commenting that he'll get things open for buisness in a couple of weeks. Of course if anything unusal does happen then you can always email him directly and he'll get the NLC Observers page with the results up and running.

Cheers,
Bill.

ps. I had a look at the transit with my planetarium software. That would be good to catch as the sun rises. A long wait until the next one!