#3196: Aurora Coolness
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Transcript
[A graph of “aurora coolness” (Y-axis) over time (X-axis), with aurora coolness having four categories from coolest to least cool:
- Spectacular ribbons of color spanning the sky and illuminating the landscape
- “Oh wow, it’s getting really bright now.”
- Sheets and pillars of light, colors faintly visible
- Visible glow on the horizon, color only visible in photos
The timeline in the graph, which spans “many hours” horizontally, starts at “visible glow” and gradually moves up and down, pretty soon reaching a sharp peak in “spectacular ribbons”, which is labeled “5 or 10 minutes”, then wobbles back down almost to “sheets and pillars”, then almost all the way up again to “spectacular ribbons”, and eventually ending back at “visible glow”.]
[Caption below the panel:] Aurora tip: If you get good views of the aurora, keep watching the sky; you might suddenly get great ones.
(Sourced from explainxkcd.com)
Title text:I've had countless nights where the line never left the bottom zone of the graph, but the few moments where it's climbed all the way to the top have made up for them all.