A few days ago, the sun launched like 5 CMEs our way. This naturally excited all the aurora nerds, myself included[1]I charged all my camera batteries and tried to keep my expectations tempered..
CMEs are the usual cause of auroras, and when you get more than one at a time, the aurora show is usually going to be more intense. So when night fell and the data was[2]were still looking intense[3]The KP index, for example, was between 7 and 9, its maximum; most of the really intense shows I’ve seen were at KP6 or so, I packed my gear and headed west of the city to one of the spot I like to use for aurora photos.
I arrived with daylight still fading and started setting up. There was another car nearby; they, too, were there to watch the show.
Here’s the first shot I got, unedited except for straightening and cropping. Even in the twilight you can see the purple/pinkish lines of aurora.
As it got dark, the lights got brighter. I had two DSLRs running, and I snapped a few photos with my phone, too. Apparently my new phone has a better camera than the old one, or else it’s better at post-processing, because those shots were pretty good if I do say so myself.
I was there from about 10:15pm till just around midnight. My friend Neal came for a visit, and there were about 3 or 4 other cars that showed up on the stretch of road, too.
OK, enough talking; here are the photos. All the DSLR photos were taken at 5 second exposures, apeture f/2.8 or f/1.8 on the 50mm lens[4]ie, as wide open as the lenses would shoot, ISO 1600. The phone photos were taken on night mode, using whatever automatic settings the phone decided would work best.
First up: the DSLRs.
And here are the photos from my phone.
And a couple of time-lapse videos. In each video, 1 second is 1 minute of real time.
Interested in prints of my photos? Let me know, and we can work something out.