Two hours of aurora borealis shooting
Yesterday morning, the aurora put on a good show for several hours, and I went out for two hours of shooting that really felt good.
My internal aurora alarm got me up at 01:10. I looked outside and was soon out with my gear. The first photo was shot in my driveway at 01:26, starting with a 15-second exposure at ISO 800.
There was aurora in every part of the sky, and it was moving a lot. There wasn’t a great deal of movement in each part of the display, but it was moving around the sky, forming and re-forming in different ways. hHe next photo was shot in the back yard at 01:31, looking over the house.
There were some wonderful patterns flowing like a river of light overhead.
I soon decided that this show was worth going for a drive. The next photo was shot a mile away at 01:42 as I drove towards the “Copper Belt” mining area behind us.
Another shot before going onto the road that leads through the forest to the mining area.
Here’s a map of this morning’s locations – the two photos above were shot at location #1, at the top centre of the map. You can open an interactive version of the map here.
I made a short detour to Mary Lake – the actual lake that our subdivision is named for. I was fairly certain that the only access to the lake – just a kayak-launch road going into the lake – faced the wrong way to get reflections, but it was worth a look anyway. The water is at the lower right of the photo – I edited the photo, lightening it so the water can be seen. This is location #2 on the map.
Looking the other way from that spot on the lake shows the river of light overhead, but no reflections. This photo, too, has been lightened so the water can be seen. I can’t explain the difference in colour from the one above (and almost all others) – that wasn’t edited.
Just before 02:00 I reached the first spot I tended to shoot at, location #3 on the map. From here, a clear 360-degree view is afforded. Heavy equipment building a massive firebreak has made a hell of a mess of the roads here, and the short but steep hill to get here now eliminates using a regular car to get here.
The aurora had faded a bit, so I boosted the ISO to 1250, keeping 15-second exposures to minimize blurring the motion of the patterns.
Tim Green has done an enormous amount of work in the Copper Belt to describe what you see here, with a strong mining-history focus. You can see this area in the Keewenaw section of his large website.
A selfie at 02:05. When I intend to go out shooting, I put out everything I need so I don’t wake up the whole house getting it. I hadn’t done that this time, so just threw a jacket on over my pyjamas and headed out – the temperature was a reasonable -7°C/19°F.
A broader view a couple of minutes later. I was fairly confident that my main target for shooting was going to be good, so then headed east and then south, mostly through forest.
Although I drive to the edge of the Black Cub South copper mining pit (location #4 on the map) during the day, I walked the last couple of hundred yards this time. It was just what I had hoped for, and at 02:27 started shooting, still with 15-second exposures at ISO 1250.
Happy with what I had gotten there, I drove around to the south side of the pit, but couldn’t find a spot that worked. The next photo was shot looking down the road because I liked the trees in the foreground.
Looking the opposite way (to the north-west). The red to the right may be aurora or the glow from Whitehorse or some of each.
As I was set up there, the display got much more vibrant 🙂
Some people can sit in one spot and watch the aurora for hours – I can’t. Driving back to the north, I decided to see what I could do with some of the logging equipment, briefly “painting” it with light from my headlamp.
At 03:00 I was back at location #3, and shot there for another few minutes before heading home. The final 3 photos were all shot there.
Instead of going back to bed when I got home as normal people do, I went back to work on my cemeteries project. I kept an eye on the sky and saw that this aurora show went on right until the dawn light overpowered it just before 06:00. It was a very good show for both variety and duration, and it felt like the first aurora shoot in a very long time that I really enjoyed, perhaps at least in part because it lasted longer than I did 🙂
It’s not even October yet, so this bodes well for a great aurora season as we near the solar maximum. I feel some all-nighters coming 🙂
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Always displaying a keen eye … and a light touch with the camera… nice shots! A truly great way to wake up…and right out the house door … thank you as always for sharing…
The northern lights have seen queer sights but, those real life shots are beautifully represented here with your photographs, I do miss those godly displays of amazement with the my real eyeballs, thanks again Sir Murrster. ✌️