of course when you go to Antarctica during the summer, its is almost
always light and since you only see an Aurora when it's dark, we
didn't see any over the summer.
I was hoping that in the last week or two at Mawson, when we had a
few hours of darkness each night, that we might get lucky, but the
first time was tonight, partly because the maximal Aurora visibility
is actually a little way further north, which of course, has more
darkness.
(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aurora_australis_20050911.jpg )
In 1831, John Biscoe, captain of the ship Tula, when surrounded by
icebergs at the Antarctic Circle wrote:
"Nearly the whole night the Aurora Australis showed the most
brilliant appearance, at times rolling itself over our heads in a
beautiful column, then as suddenly forming itself as the unrolled
fringe of a curtain, and again suddenly shooting to the form of a
serpent and at times appearing not many yards above us; it was
decidedly transacted in our own atmosphere, and was without exception
the grandest phenomenon of nature of its kind I have ever witnessed".
By way of contrast, I wrote:
"At about midnight, a few faint aurora was visible, although you
really had to stand in the dark for 5 minutes before your eyes
adapted enough to be able to see it. Then a faint green smudge could
be made out, eventually becoming more distinct. It fluctuates over
minutes, sometimes just a patch in the sky like green city lights
shining onto clouds, and then 15 minutes later, extending halfway
across the sky like a gigantic ribbon, which suddenly fades away
again over a couple of minutes."
The photographs were never going to be very good, since the aurora
was so faint and time exposures on a moving boat will blur out all
the details, but you can get an idea of what it looked like from up
on the top of the bridge, where it was minus 6 degrees and windy.
You can see how the boat's movement over the 30 second time exposure
has made nice little patterns out of the stars.
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