Another Aurora Borealis night
After a dismal winter of aurora viewing, with clear skies and a good aurora very seldom coinciding, I had pretty much given up on getting any good photos this year. But last night was the third exceptional night of photography in the past week. I went out a fourth time but it was a dud.
I almost didn’t go out last night because of the full moon, which overpowers most auroral displays. I went to bed early, but woke up at 10:00 pm and saw how incredibly strong the aurora was so got dressed, packed and headed out.
Because of the strength of the display, I decided to start shooting in the city, which is normally the place to avoid because of the light pollution. By 10:35 I was at the Yukon Transportation Museum where I took a few shots, then went next door to the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre to work with the wooly mammoth statues outside. One of the biggest challenges in Northern Lights photography is getting the focus right, especially when you have a foreground up close.
It struck me that the control tower at the airport would be a superb place to watch the aurora from, so that was my next stop. Not to go up, unfortunately, just to get some photos of the tower.
The view from my usual airplane-watching spot. The lights at bottom right are from a truck with a flashing light.
The aurora had gotten even stronger, so I then went back to the Yukon Transportation Museum and re-shot some of the photos I started the night with. The ones with their Douglas DC-3, CF-CPY (a.k.a. “The World’s Largest Weather Vane”), are my favourite images of the entire night.
I was really enjoying being able to shoot Whitehorse landmarks with the aurora, so my next stop was at The Horse, but the spotlights on it were too bright and the aurora didn’t show up at all.
I thought about hiking around the airport trail to get some shots of the city, but I had twisted my ankle out at Fish Lake while trying to shoot the aurora the night before, and decided that that would be just looking for trouble. This is the industrial part of the city looking down Two Mile Hill.
A broad view of the Beringia Centre from the Alaska Highway.
My last stop in Whitehorse was at the sternwheeler SS Klondike. The aurora was fading, though, and the spotlights on the ship made the results there mediocre.
I went down the Alaska Highway, but the results were what you can expect with a normal aurora and a bright moon. This is looking down the Yukon River, with the landscape lit by the moon.
A car coming across the Yukon River Bridge on the Alaska Highway.
A “selfie” shot at the viewpoint above the bridge, at 01:40. Without the moon, this would have still been an excellent aurora night.
I thought a lot about ending my night, but kept hoping that the aurora would get stronger again, so continued down the highway. This was shot at Marsh Lake, where I had a short nap.
I hadn’t continued one of my aurora drives into the mountains past Jake’s Corner for a very long time because I’d never got the shots I was looking for. Just as I got to the best spot in that valley, though, the aurora got a big energy boost. I hiked through deep snow a couple of hundred feet to get past a power line, and got the shots I’d been after for many years 🙂
The Tagish River Bridge was the last place I got a photo worth posting – after a long wait, this one little ray flashed on for just a few seconds.
I didn’t want to get home before 06:00 because no matter how careful I am, I always wake Cathy up, so I stopped at the Carcross Desert and slept for another hour. I noticed that there was still a crown of aurora above me – that was almost 10 hours of continuous display.
I got home just after 6, and the girls (dog and cat) were more than happy to join me in bed for a proper sleep 🙂
There’s nothing in tonight’s aurora forecast to indicate that we’ll have a repeat performance, but the strength of last night’s show was a surprise too, so I’m open to another sleepless night!
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