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Thanks so much for all the good research even though it really does not explain too much. I was really disappointed to hear about the Danish research, as I thought from what I had read initially - tiny blurb in the Halifax Chronicle Herald - that the scientists were quite hopeful they were on the right track. I had been under the impression up until today that it was the radiotelescope that had done the recording of the sounds, but obviously that is not the case. I haven't pursued this interest in the aurora sounds for a long time now, and it is amazing how little has changed. So it is very frustrating having been blessed with hearing them once under very good and long conditions, not to know what is really doing this. My dad was standing beside me, out in the open, with no large trees around, on a windless night. I believe the field was snow covered at that point as it was mid December. We listened and ooh and ahhed for quite a while. The aurora were everywhere covering the entire sky and were of every possible hue, size and shape. Every night that winter in the mid fifties the skies were this way, but this was the only time we heard the lights sing.Sometimes the sky was relatively still, but when the aurora started to "dance" as it has been described, there was an immediate rustling coming from that which was moving, and the sound was definitely up in the sky, not ground related, and the volume was so in syn with the speed of the aurora that it was impossible to say that there was any time lapse between the two events. One did not have to strain or concentrate to hear it, and neither of us wore glasses at the time. My hair was probably longish, but my very anti Hippie dad's was never allowed to grow very long before he was off to the barber. Some of the theories about how we are or are not conducting this sound is pretty ridiculous. Oh, well, to the uninitiated and to the physicists, this is a terribly difficult concept, because it is just not within the realm of the laws of physics, or at least the ones we have now. Somewhere I did read that perhaps the ejection of material from the sun is so great sometimes that the electrons travelling here from the sun are bumping into one another, thus causing the sound. Maybe our hearing is more sensitive than we give ourselves credit. I know people who have heard it more than once. I know people who have heard it in the summer time. I once witnessed a massive aurora display here in Wolfville in late August in the late seventies early one morning. There was no traffic, no wind, and I was sure I would hear them. Not a sound except for a few migrating shorebirds flying overhead and light by which one could have read a book! This is a good subject to bring up now, because supposedly the sun is coming up to the more active part of its cycle which I think is 11 years, but I may have that number wrong, and every once in awhile one of these cycles seems to be more flamboyant than usual, and this one is predicted to be one of those. Now...whether it will be or not is another question, and probably won't be answered until after the fact. However it would be nice to be well prepared to observe, take photos, and listen carefully, and if possible to have other people with you for verification. As for recording the sound I wonder if Dennis Jones has any ideas of how it might be done? He has worked in under water acoutics all his life, and he has made a wonderful hobby of recording bird songs of the same species and comparing them. Many of us have heard him speak at our naturalists groups. Working under water for the Dept. of National Defence and working in air are two different matters, but he is more likely to solve this than anyone I know! I hope he is still on NatureNS and will comment! as to how this might be tackled?? I hope he will also tell us some about his recordings of birds this summer - if he is able to record and match the same voice print in approximately the same spot, suggesting that the same bird comes back to the same territory to nest. JET
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