In case you slept through my Saturday morning interview with Shannah-Lee Vidal—or you’re not in CBC Manitoba’s broadcast area—here’s how the story went.
aurora borealis
Aurora, April 23, 2023
Last night, Kathleen said to me, “I hear the aurora should be good tonight.” I checked the app on my phone that shows me the aurora data. Everything looked pretty good except the Bz value, which was about +17. (For a good show, you want the Bz to be negative. The longer it’s been negative, the better.)
Continue reading “Aurora, April 23, 2023”In the paper
One of my photos from the March 23rd aurora was the cover photo for this week’s Westman This Week section of the Brandon Sun.
I think that’s pretty neat.
Aurora, March 23, 2023
Wow, that was a show.
The data looked ridiculous from the outset. There’s one parameter, when you’re consulting the oracle (sorry, the space-weather data), the Bz, that you want to be a negative number. I’ve seen great shows when the Bz was around ‑3 or ‑5. The longer it’s negative, the better.
Yesterday afternoon, every time I checked, the Bz was around ‑15. Crazy.
And the auroral oval looked like this. When it’s yellow, that’s usually a good sign. Red—that much red—is flat-out amazing.
Aurora, Feb. 27, 2023
There was less cloud cover tonight. It was still cold and windy out in the countryside though.
It was worth it, though, I’d say.
Aurora through the clouds
The aurora forecast was good. The cloud forecast was not. But I ventured out anyway, just to see if there was anything worth seeing.
In short: Yes, but it would have been even better on a cloudless night.
Saturday night’s show
We went down to Boissevain on the weekend to help out with the Dunrea Flea Market[1]It rather outgrew the available space in Dunrea., and stayed over at our friends’ farmhouse a few miles south of town. There were a few shows put on by the Northern Lights that night; I caught one of them. They danced for about 20 minutes while I watched. Here are some of the photos I got.
I tried to capture a panorama, to show just how much of the sky was involved. Unfortunately my image-stitching program balked at creating a panorama; the aurora were moving too much for the software to find similarities in the photos. I manually aligned them instead.
And I did up a quick timelapse. The 33 seconds of video represents about 33 minutes of photos, each one a 5‑second exposure.
When the show was winding down, I turned around and saw that the Milky Way was high above the farm. One more photo, I thought, then I’ll go inside.
Footnotes
| ↑1 | It rather outgrew the available space in Dunrea. |
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Friday night in the park
My friend Tim was camping at Wasagaming, as is his wont on the September long weekend. I went to visit on Friday evening.
We headed up to Spruces to check out the sunset…
…and the moon.
Later, the galaxy appeared as the moon set.
And I decided to try to catch Jupiter with my 55–250mm lens, which is usually too shaky at 250mm. It seems to have worked. (If I’m reading this right, the moons are, L‑R, Callisto, Europa, and Io.)
After I dropped Tim off at his campsite, I saw that the aurora were making an appearance. I stopped in a few places (the beach in Wasagaming[1]Man, I really don’t like the orange lights at the beach, the dock on the golf course road, and on the roadside on #10 highway).
Footnotes
| ↑1 | Man, I really don’t like the orange lights at the beach |
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Aurora, Aug. 19–20, 2022
Last night, the aurora data looked good, and also the sky was clear (unlike other nights lately). I packed my camera and tripod, then headed out to one of my favourite spots (Twin Pines Field, let’s call it) about 10:45pm.
The temperature dropped while I was out, going from about 24°C to 17°C. Everything got coated with a slick of dew, including—as you can see in the last photo—my lens[1]Actually, it was the transparent UV filter over the lens, which was much easier to wipe clean. Phew..
All told, I shot almost a thousand images, each one a 5‑second exposure[2]Nerds: 11mm, 5s, f/2.8, ISO 3200., which conveniently means that making a timelapse at 12 frames a second creates a video where 1 second of video = 1 minute of real time. So my hour and twenty minutes at Twin Pines Field condenses into a minute and twenty seconds for your edutainment.
Enjoy!
On a cloudy night
The aurora forecast was great, but the earthly forecast was clouds, clouds, clouds. I ventured out anyway, hoping against hope for a small break in the clouds.
On the back road I chose, there were clouds all around, and lightning—lots of it—to the south and east. I didn’t hear any thunder, but there were moments where the clouds lit up from within. I managed to get one bright bolt in focus.
Looking up, I saw that there was indeed a break in the clouds, just large enough for Jupiter to shine through. If you view the photo full-size, you’ll see two moons as well: Callisto on the left and Ganymede on the right (if I’m using this tool correctly).
Then, before heading home, I decided to take a couple shots of the northern sky. There was a hint of green to it. This is the best photo I managed of the aurora trying to peek through the clouds.
And then I went home.