We are at the solar minimum...

I was really looking forward to seeing the Northern Lights up here on the Last Frontier...alas...its seems that the requisite solar activity is at the bottom of its 22 year cycle.

Just my luck!

The Fairbanks Daily Newsminer reports: — Ester photographer LeRoy Zimmerman made the switch to digital cameras this year to better capture the phenomenon known as the aurora borealis. Now he just needs some aurora to work with. “There’s nothing; it’s really disappointing,” Zimmerman said. “I’ve got my digital camera. I’m ready. Let’s go.” Zimmerman isn’t the only one wondering where the aurora borealis, commonly referred to as northern lights, are this winter. The Interior’s normal wintertime light show has been noticeably absent this winter. “I talk to people in town and everybody who knows what I do asks me, ‘Where is the aurora? What’s happening?’” said Dirk Lummerzheim, a research professor who studies the aurora borealis for the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. It’s a legitimate question, and Lummerzheim has the answer. “We are at the solar minimum,” the UAF professor said. “When solar activity dies down like this, the aurora activity also diminishes in the north.” Aurora borealis, a curtain-like, luminous glow in the upper atmosphere, is caused when energy particles from the sun collide with the Earth’s magnetic field. Solar activity runs on a 22-year cycle — 11 positive years and 11 negative years. The cycle is at the bottom of the negative cycle, Lummerzheim said. This is the second winter in a row the aurora has been “quiet,” as Lummerzheim put it.

Read the rest of the article here.