It was clear to the west, so I grabbed my camera and took a chance.
It was not clear to the north.
Once I got home, the sky to the east was clear. I set up a camera in our spare room, aimed due east, and let it click until the batteries died. Between 11:30pm and 2:30am it got these gems, plucked from almost 2000 frames.
These photos, I have to keep reminding myself, were taken inside the city. Normally I’m happy when I get light like this a few kilometres out of town, where it’s starting to get properly dark. These aurora were competing with streetlights, and winning.
Oh yeah, I also turned the 2000ish photos from the spare room into a timelapse.
The second night[1]First night is here. of the show was a bit tamer, and tempered by smoke in the air that amplified all the ground lights. Still, it was a good night. I spent a couple hours snapping photos with my friend Kevin.
Left: unedited; right: colours edited
The smoke turned the crescent moon reddish-orange, too.
Timelapse. See if you can tell when the light was strong enough that I could see it reflecting off my hi-vis vest.
I was out from about 10:30pm till about half past midnight. It was another good night.
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.
The first photo I took upon arriving
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.
Facing south; you can see my cameras on their tripods in front of my car
And a couple of time-lapse videos. In each video, 1 second is 1 minute of real time.
I was out from about 10:30pm till midnight, which—judging from some of the other photos I’ve seen—was too early for the real show. Regardless, there was a haze at the horizon and I set up my cameras.
In the video, one second is one minute of real-time. The first minute and a half is from a camera pointed straight north; the remainder is aimed northwest.
I lay awake from about 4 am till about 5:30 am thanks to a couple of thunderstorms passing through.
In the morning, I biked about 6 km before it got overly hot.
While I was out on my bike, I took photos for a couple of panoramas (one of which turned out as I’d hoped).
The plough cairn (panorama; 18 photos, 50mm, f/2.8 each)
I wrote 500 words in Daniel, Daniel, Daniel, did some preliminary editing of “The Slow Apocalypse” (though it might still be too early for me to work on this), and wrote 300 word in “Dried Flowers”.
I read a few more chapters in The Wizard—as I approach the end, I’m torn between savouring it and finding out what happens next.
I tried to come up with a coherent ending for Daniel, Daniel, Daniel, because while I know the final scene, I don’t have the story’s ending fully fleshed out yet. It’s a bit frustrating, frankly; I’m the kind of writer that needs a solid ending before I start a project. I thought I had it, but the characters are going their own ways.
I noticed the sky had got quite colourful about 9:15 pm, and stepped outside in time to snap a photo of a lovely sunset. I only got bitten by 22 mosquitoes in the 5 minutes I was outside, too, so that’s a victory.
Sunset on a Friday evening
About 11:45 I went and got some photos of Comet NEOWISE and the northern lights. (And another couple dozen bug bites.)
Comet NEOWISE and aurora
And I managed to catch the International Space Station as it went overhead, even though it tried to hide behind a cloud.
I waved to the ISS astronauts as they went by
All in all, a good Friday, even if it was a bit too hot to even think straight. (No sweeter sin than air conditioning, I tell you.)
