notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.

Eastern North Atlantic at Night, from the International Space Station, 28 March 2012. Photograph: André Kuipers. (Posted to Flickr by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, via iamdanw.)

Kristian Birkeland’s terrella, as pictured in an article about his use of the models at Sphæra, the newsletter of the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford:

Birkeland’s largest experiment was carried out in 1913 in a large vacuum chamber of 1,000 litres capacity with terrellas of 24 and 36 cm in diameter. This apparatus became very well known for its ability to recreate Aurora effects and in Norway its fame is such that it is depicted on the Norwegian 200 kroner banknote.

That banknote is one of the most attractive I’ve seen from any country. Sadly, as this excerpt of Lucy Jago’s excellent book The Northern Lights recounts, Birkeland’s theoretical explanation of the aurora, based on observational work in the far north of Norway during long, cold winters failed to convince the influential British scientific establishment:

Arthur Schuster, a Fellow of the Royal Society and a prominent scientist in the field of terrestrial magnetism, dismissed Birkeland’s huge volume with a terse comment in the Society’s Proceedings:

“Even originally well-defined pencils of cathode rays from the sun cannot reach the Earth. For Birkeland’s theories to be correct, the existence of such cathode rays is clearly presupposed to be necessary… and this assumption is untenable.” Birkeland was furious, for he knew that, if his theories were ever to be widely disseminated, it was necessary for the British scientific establishment to accept them. Over the next five years, Birkeland’s life fell apart. 

It was only in the 1960s that the “cathode rays”, or what we’d now call the solar wind (a stream of charged particles, both electrons and protons) were observed and his theories about the cause of aurora were vindicated.

(inspired by Dan W’s post of a different image of a terrella)

Another image from the Reuters best of the year.

“The natural phenomenon called the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) happened to show up on a clear night when I was taking photographs of the [Eyjafjallajokull] volcano the evening before I left to return to New York. During this assignment some of the more interesting images of the volcano had come at night when I had the ability to take long exposures and get the glow of the lava in the camera. Out of the week I was there, only about 3 or 4 evenings were clear enough to see the mountain at night. This was the last evening and as the ash plume was very high I was excited to take images of the glow of the lava against the ash cloud. The Northern Lights showed up around midnight and only stayed for maybe 30-40 minutes before disappearing. It was extremely exciting to see them and even more exciting to know I was in a position to photograph them. I knew the story had begun to die down but these images would renew a bit of interest in it for another day or so. It’s a rare time when preparation meets the occurrence of something as beautiful as this so it was easily a once in a lifetime experience that I enjoyed.” Canon 5D Mark II, lens 16-35mm (at 16mm), f2.8, 6 s. Photograph: Lucas Jackson.

“Iceland: The Northern Lights above the ash plume of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano” in the Guardian’s 24 hours in pictures. Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters.

My biggest kodak moment (by *ice):

What do you call taking a photo of a volcanic eruption together with the Northern lights on a starry night ? “Once in a lifetime opportunity” doesn’t really cover it.

Astronomy North: ”Show me someone who believes you can’t see the northern lights above the city and I’ll show you someone who goes to bed before eleven o’clock.” via bsag.