A brief but intense aurora show
As I went to bed Tuesday night, I looked outside and said to Cathy that it felt like an aurora night – “in a couple of hours.” An hour and a half later, she woke me up and said a display had started. I put my pyjamas on, got my camera gear together, and went out into the back yard. The temperature was -9°C/+16°F, the sky was clear, and I crossed my fingers that the mild display (though with wonderful colours!) would get better. The first photo was shot at 10:18 – very civilized time and weather conditions compared to what we often get 🙂
Three minutes later, my wish was granted, and the real show began.
I started shooting at ISO 1250 with 20-second exposures.
I was shooting pretty much constantly, though moving my position over a range of 100 feet or so. The trees on our property are really frustrating at aurora time!
By 10:24 the display was covering most of the sky.
The brightest displays were still to the north, though.
There was so much motion in the displays that at 10:26 I knocked the exposure time back a bit, to 15 seconds.
It was now 10:29 and the show kept getting better.
At 10:32 I went inside, woke Cathy up and told her she had to see this, then grabbed my phone and car keys for a possible relocation to a place with no trees. At 10:38 I started shooting in the front yard, which has slightly better sight lines but the neighbour’s security lights and my overhead wires are both problematic.
I only shot in the front yard for a couple of minutes, then fired up the Tracker and went looking for a better location. I was going to go to the Mount Sima road, but by the time I reached the end of our street I had decided to only go 3 blocks, to Booth Road, the access road for the Army cadet camp. That turned out to be an excellent choice. At 10:48 I started shooting in a much better spot.
My aurora lens, a 10mm Rokinon, covers a whole lot of sky, and this was so much more enjoyable! 🙂
At 10:50 I shot 3 “selfies.”
I got a few more shots, then at 10:56 the display started rapidly fading.
I took this final shot looking south at 10:56, then headed home. The entire show had lasted 38 minutes, during which time I shot 38 photos. I stayed up for another hour or so but the lights never returned. Timing is everything!
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Beautiful!
Wowza Skookum performance of them northern lights big show, amazing photos of the display in PJ attire, not sure if your sky’s are getting geo engineering spray but the sunsets down south here are more intensive with the aerosolizing of the skies above, lately the planes have been just normal contrails over our fly way, thanks for the natural display of the amazing mother earth’s powers 👍🍁