Alaska bowl company and Aurora lights

[Dieseldoc]

Just got back from bucket list check off of Northern lights for my wife.
We spent ten days in Fairbanks Alaska area to view lights at two major places one Basecamp and Chena hot springs, got to experience outstanding display at each place. Only thing was the -10 wind chill-36 but we did get The correct outer clothing so it's wasn't to bad, just didn't stay out for more the ten mins or so, warming hut was savior.
Had tour day in Fairbanks and visited the Alaska bowl where they use the coring system on birch timber, finishing is done with a device using vac chuck to hold bowl and mechanical arm with sanding belt does the finish on both in and out side. They do not use any gouge, scraper on bowls. Watch sanding process and was I pressed.
Talked to owner who said they ship world wide , been in business 31 years so far.

 

[bsshog40]

Pretty on cool on both items. I have a cousin that lives in alaska. He's always posting the lights on his facebook. Back in October, the northern lights were very bright. I took this pic with my phone here in omaha, tx.

 

[wolf creek knives]

Just south of Fairbanks is a place called "The knotty shop". Really neat wood artwork and well worth a visit if you have the time. I'm glad you're enjoying your trip, Alaska is a wonderful place to visit. Enjoy!

 

[jrista]

The northern lights during October were rather spectacular. I'd never seen them myself, and the show from Colorado was impressive. Not particularly colorful, but the lights were still a couple hundred miles north of where I live, so the falloff and extinction is fairly significant (now I need to see them overhead before I die!) I've been watching solar cycles since SC23 in the late 90s/early 00s. SC24 was very weak, and there weren't too many great auroral storms, and I never saw anything. Lived in California central coast as a kid, and was never able to see anything during SC23 either.

SC25 has been well above expectations, though. The May 2024 storm reached G5 levels, which we haven't had since the 2000s. The October storm, during the substorm I'm sharing here, reached G5 for a very short while, but not quite like the May storm (which I wasn't able to photograph.) The October storm, boy, the pillars (red rays, specifically) reached TOWERING heights, and that final substorm was bright enough that I could see both green and red, faintly, and the activity was rapid and constant! I'd never seen anything like that before.

I read an article the next day, that stated the ISS, which usually flies above the aurora (which are usually at a low level green, and even during an average storm, the reds don't reach much higher), was literally flying through the upper reaches of the towering red columns. These recent aurora also allowed confirmation of something called GBR, or Great Blue Rays. The towering red pillars were reaching heights over 100km, but GBR can apparently reach heights of thousands of kilometers. Some lucky few have been able to observe those, which are faint, but make the towering heights in my photos above, seem like a small rise.

Some people are saying SC25 is over. I'm not convinced...so far, the vast majority of the activity has been in the southern hemisphere of the sun. Sometimes, the northern and southern hemispheres peak in activity at different times. Since late December, the northern hemisphere has started to become more active, and we recently had some very complex active regions (the kind that can cause major geomagnetic storms and aurora!) So, we may still have a chance to see another G4+ level storm like this (and May!)