2024 brought us a total eclipse of the Sun, superb auroras, and a naked-eye comet, three top highlights of a wonderful year of celestial attractions. Maybe the best!
In our book The Backyard Astronomer’s Guide (which we revised this year), Terence Dickinson and I created an Aah! Factor scale with various celestial sights ranked from:
• 1, evoking just a smile, to …
• 10, a life-changing event!
Our book’s Aah! Factor Scale in Chapter 1
Coming in at an 8 is a naked-eye comet. Deserving a 9 is an all-sky display of an aurora. The only sight to rate a top 10 is a total eclipse of the Sun.
2024 brought all three, and more!
Here’s my look back at what I think was one of the greatest years of stargazing.
NOTE: The images might take a while to all load. All can be enlarged to full screen. Just click or tap on them.
January
A Winter Moonrise to Begin the Year
The rising of the winter “Wolf” Moon, the Full Moon of January, over the frozen Crawling Lake Reservoir, in southern Alberta.
Now, this was not any form of rare event. But seeing and shooting any sky sight in the middle of a Canadian winter is an accomplishment. This is the rising of the Full Moon of January, popularly called the Wolf Moon, over a frozen lake near home in Alberta, Canada 🇨🇦.
It serves to bookend the collection with a Full Moon I captured eleven months later in December.
February
Auroras from Churchill, Manitoba
Had this been my only chance to see the Northern Lights fill the sky this year, I would have been happy. As we often see in Churchill, the aurora covered the sky on several nights, a common sight when you are underneath the main band of aurora borealis that arcs across the northern part of the globe.
This is a vertical panorama of the sky-filling aurora of February 10, 2024, as seen from the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, in Churchill, Manitoba.
I attended to two aurora tour groups at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre who both got good displays to check “seeing the Northern Lights” off their bucket list. Join me in 2025!
March
Under the Austral Sky
Ranking a respectable 7 on our Aah! Factor scale is the naked-eye sight of the galactic centre overhead, with the Milky Way arcing across the sky. That’s possible from a latitude of about 30° South. That’s where I went in March, back to Australia 🇦🇺 for the first time since 2017.
This is a framing of the most spectacular area of the southern Milky Way, from Centaurus at left, to Carina at right, with Crux, the Southern Cross, at centre.
I wrote about it in my previous blog, where I present a tour along the southern Milky Way, and wide-angle views of the Milky Way (the images here are framings of choice regions).
This frames the southern Milky Way from Canis Major and its bright star Sirius at top, to Carina and its bright star Canopus at bottom, the two brightest stars in the night sky. The large red complex is the Gum Nebula.
It is a magical latitude that all northern astronomers should make a pilgrimage to, if only to just lie back and enjoy the view of our place in the outskirts of the Galaxy. I was glad to be back Down Under, to check this top sky sight off my bucket list for 2024.
April
A Total Eclipse of the Sun
No sooner had I returned home from Oz, when it was time to load up the car with telescope gear and drive to the path of the April 8 total solar eclipse, the first “TSE” in North America since 2017, which was the last total eclipse I had seen, in a trip to Idaho.
This is a composite of telescopic close-ups of the April 8, 2024 total eclipse, with a multi-exposure blend for the corona at centre, flanked by the diamond rings.
But where? I started south to Texas, my Plan A. Poor weather forecasts there prompted a hasty return to Canada, to drive east across the country to … I ended up in Québec. My blog about my cross-continental chase is here. My final edited music video is linked to below.
It was gratifying to see a total eclipse from “home” in Canada, only the third time I’ve been able to do that (previously in 1979 – Manitoba, and 2008 – Nunavut). If the rest of the year had been cloudy except for this day I wouldn’t have complained. Much.
This definitely earned a 10 on the Aah! Factor scale. Total eclipses are overwhelming and addictive. I’ve made my bookings for 2026 in Spain 🇪🇸 and 2027 in Tunisia 🇹🇳.
May
The Sky’s On Fire
It had been several years since I had seen an aurora from my backyard with colours as vivid and obvious as they were this night. But on May 10, the sky erupted with a fabulous display of aurora that much of the world saw, as aurora borealis in the north and aurora australis in the south.
This is a 300º panorama of the May 10, 2024 Northern Lights display, when the Kp Index reached 8 (out of 9), bringing aurora to the southern U.S.
This was the first of several all-sky shows this year. I blogged about the year’s great auroras here, where there are links to the movies I produced that capture the Northern Lights as only movies can, recording changes so rapid it can be hard to take it all in. Check off a 9 here!
So not even half way through the year, I had seen three of the top sky sights: the Milky Way core overhead (7), an all-sky aurora (9), and a total eclipse of the Sun (10).
But there was more to come! Including an Aah! Factor 8.
June
World Heritage Nightscape Treks
This is a panorama of the arch of the Milky Way rising over the Badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, with a sky tinted with twilight and airglow.
The sky took a break from presenting spectacles, allowing me to head off on short local trips, to favourite nightscape sites in southern Alberta, which we have in abundance. The Badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park are just an hour away, the site for the scene above.
A panorama at sunset at Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park (Áísínai’pi) in Alberta, with the Milk River below and the Sweetgrass Hills in the distance in Montana. Note the people at far right.
The rock formations of Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park are a bit farther, requiring a couple of days commitment to shoot. Clouds hid the main attraction, the Milky Way, this night, but did provide a fine sunset.
The Milky Way rises over Mt. Blakiston, in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta. This was June 10, 2024, so snow remains at high altitudes.
A little further west down the highway is Waterton Lakes National Park, another great spot I try to visit at least once each year.
All locations I hit this month are U.N. World Heritage Sites, thus the theme of my blog from June. People travel from all over the world to come here, to sites I can visit in a few hours drive.
July
Mountains by Starlight
In summer we now often contend with smoke from forest fires blanketing the sky, hiding not just the stars by night, but even the Sun by day.
The Andromeda Galaxy at centre is rising above Takakkaw Falls, in Yoho National Park. Above is the W of stars marking Cassiopeia.
But before the smoke rolled in this past summer I was able to visit a spot, Yoho National Park in British Columbia, that had been on my shot list for several years. The timing with clear nights at the right season and Moon phase has to work out. In July it did, for a shoot by starlight at Takakkaw Falls, among the tallest in Canada.
This is the Milky Way core and a bonus meteor over the peaks and valleys at Saskatchewan River Crossing, in Banff National Park, Alberta.
The following nights I was in Banff National Park, at familiar spots on the tourist trail, but uncrowded and quiet at night. It was a pleasure to enjoy the world-class Rocky Mountain scenery under the stars on perfect nights.
August
The All-Sky Auroras Return
In August I headed east to Saskatchewan and the annual Summer Star Party staged by the astronomy clubs in Regina and Saskatoon. It is always a pleasure to attend the SSSP in the beautiful Cypress Hills. The sky remained clear post-party for a trip farther east to the little town of Val Marie, where I stayed at a former convent, and had a night to remember out in Grasslands National Park, one of Canada’s first, and finest, dark sky preserves.
The Northern Lights in a superb all-sky Kp6 to 7 display on August 11-12, 2024, in Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan.
The plan was to shoot the August 11 Perseid meteor shower, but the aurora let loose again for a stunning show over 70 Mile Butte. My earlier blog has more images and movies from this wonderful month of summertime Northern Lights.
We are fortunate in western Canada 🇨🇦 to be able to see auroras year-round, even in summer. Farther north at the usual Northern Lights destinations, the sky is too bright at night in summer.
September
Back to Deep Sky Wonders …
This is a framing of the rich starfield in Sagittarius and Serpens containing a mix of bright star clouds, glowing nebulas, and dark dust in the Milky Way.
September is the month for another astronomical party in the Cypress Hills, but on the Alberta side. At the wonderful Southern Alberta Star Party under its very dark skies, I was able to shoot some favourite deep-sky fields along the Milky Way with new gear I was testing at the time.
This frames the complex region of emission nebulas in central Cygnus near the star Gamma Cygni, at lower left. The Crescent Nebula is at centre.
And from home, September brought skies dark and clear enough (at least when there was no aurora!) for more captures of colourful nebulas (above and below) along the summer Milky Way.
This frames all the photogenic components of the bright Veil Nebula in Cygnus, a several-thousand-year-old supernova remnant.
We invest a lot of money into the kind of specialized gear needed to shoot these targets (and I’m not nearly as “committed” as some are, believe me!), only to find the nights when it all comes together can be few and far between.
… Plus, A Very Minor Eclipse of the Moon
I had to include this, if only for stark contrast with the spectacular solar eclipse six months earlier.
We had an example of the most minor of lunar eclipses on March 24, 2024, with a so-called “penumbral” eclipse of the Moon, an eclipse so slight it’s hard to tell anything unusual is happening. (So I’ve not even included an image here, though I was able to shoot it.)
Me at another successful eclipse chase … to my backyard to capture the partial lunar eclipse on September 17, 2024. The Moon is rising in the southeast.
On September 17, we had our second eclipse of the Moon in 2024. This time the Earth’s umbral shadow managed to take a tiny bite out of the Full Moon. Nothing spectacular to be sure. But at least this eclipse expedition was to no farther away than my rural backyard. A clear eclipse of any kind, even a partial eclipse, especially one seen from home, is reason to celebrate. I did!
Of course, a total eclipse of the Moon, when the Full Moon is completely engulfed in Earth’s umbra and turns red, is what we really want to see. They rate a 7 on our Aah! Factor scale. We haven’t had a “TLE” since November 8, 2022, blogged about here.
We knew early in 2024 that the then newly-discovered Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS had the potential to perform this month. I planned a trip south to favourite spots in Utah and Arizona to take advantage of what we hoped would be a fine autumn comet.
This is Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (C/2023 A3) at its finest in the evening sky, on October 14, two days after its closest approach to Earth, and with it sporting a 10º- to 15º-long dust tail, and a short narrow anti-tail pointed toward the horizon. The location was Turret Arch in the Windows area of Arches National Park, Utah.
It blossomed nicely, especially as it entered into the evening sky in mid-October, as above. Despite the bright moonlight, it was easy to see with the unaided eye, a celestial rarity we get only once a decade, on average, if we are lucky. My blog of my comet chase is here.
This is a panorama of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS over Arches National Park, Utah, on a moonlit night, October 15, 2024, with the comet easy to see with the unaided eye.
A naked-eye comet ranks an 8 on our Aah! Factor scale. So now 2024 had delivered all four of our Top 4 sky sights.
This 360° panorama captures a rare SAR (Stable Auroral Red) arc across the Arizona sky in the pre-dawn hours of October 11, 2024. The SAR arc was generated in the high atmosphere as part of the global geomagnetic storm of October 10/11, 2024, with a Kp8 rating that night.
But … just as a bonus, there was another fabulous aurora on October 10, seen in my case from the unique perspective of southern Arizona, with an appearance of a bright “SAR” arc more prominent than I had ever seen before. So that view was a rarity, too, so unusual it doesn’t even make our Aah! list, as SARs are typically not visible to the eye.
November
Back to Norway for Northern Lights
2024 was notable for travel getting “back to normal,” at least for me, with two long-distance drives, and now my second overseas trip. This one took me north to Norway 🇳🇴, which I had been visiting twice a year as an enrichment lecturer during pre-pandemic years.
A green and red aurora appears over the coast of Norway, with Jupiter bright at right. This was from the Hurtigruten ship m/s Nordkapp on November 10, 2024, on a coastal cruise with a Road Scholar tour group.
The auroras were excellent, though nothing like the great shows of May and October. But the location sailing along the scenic coast and fjords makes up for any shortfall in the Lights. It was good to be back. I plan to return in 2025 for two cruises in October. Join me there, too!
December
A Winter Moonrise to End the Year
As I write this, December has been nothing but cloud. Almost. A clear hour on Full Moon night allowed a capture of the “Cold Moon,” with the Moon near Jupiter, then at its brightest for the year. So that’s the other lunar bookend to the year, shot from the snowy backyard.
This is the Full Moon of December 14, 2024, near the planet Jupiter at lower right. Both were rising into the eastern sky in the early evening.
However, I did say after the clear total eclipse in April that if the rest of 2024 had been cloudy I wouldn’t complain. So I’m not.
And there’s no reason to, as 2024 did deliver the best year of stargazing I can remember. 2017 had a total solar eclipse. 2020 had a great comet. But we have to go back to 2003 for aurora shows as widespread and as a brilliant as we’ve seen this year. 2024 had them all. And more!
The Sun peaked at “solar maximum” and gave us wonderful sky shows in 2024.
Officially, the Sun reached the peak of its roughly 11-year cycle of activity — “solar max” — in late 2024. That’s according to NASA and NOAA.
During 2024 several major solar storms erupted as a result of the Sun’s increased activity. They blew massive clouds of energetic particles — electrons and protons — away from the Sun. Some of those storm clouds swept past Earth, sparking bright auroras widely seen in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
The rise and fall of solar activity. The peak at right is as of November 2024 in mid-Cycle 25. Courtesy SolarCycleScience.com.
I was fortunate enough, as many were, to witness several of 2024’s great auroras, from home in Alberta, and from as far south as Arizona.
Trips north to Churchill, Manitoba, and to northern Norway also presented some fine aurora nights. But that’s normal at any time in the solar cycle from those sub-Arctic and Arctic locations.
It’s when the aurora comes to you that you get a truly memorable show. And 2024 had its share of them.
NOTE: My blog has a lot of images and links to movies that may take a while to load. Images can be clicked on to bring them up full screen. The blog also contains many links to other sites to learn more!
Starting the Year — February in Churchill
This was the month I made my annual trek to Churchill, Manitoba, to instruct aurora tour groups at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre. Why not join us in 2025?
An aurora selfie at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, on February 10, with a modest Kp4-level storm underway. This is 20-seconds with the TTArtisan 11mm fisheye lens at f/2.8 on the Canon R6 at ISO 1600.
Yes, the air is cold (usually about -25° C) but the skies are often clear and aurora filled, as Churchill sits under the normal location of the auroral oval, the main zone of auroras. In fact, it is as far south in the world as the auroral oval normally resides, at a latitude of only 58º North, well south of the Arctic. If it’s clear, there’s almost always some level of Northern Lights.
This year, 2024, was no exception. Even on nights with low readings on the usual auroral indicators we got sky-filling displays that are rare down south.
This is a southerly arc of green and red Northern Lights on February 9. This is a panorama of 5 segments, each 20 seconds with the Laowa 15mm lens at f/2 on the Canon R6 at ISO 1600.
What I find in Churchill is that even with numerically weak and visually dim shows, as above, the camera often sees very red and photogenic auroras. The eye sees the colours only when the aurora brightens, which it often does (as I record below), sparking rippling green curtains (from glowing oxygen) fringed with pink (from glowing nitrogen).
I didn’t shoot time-lapses or movies this year in Churchill. Instead, the example movie above, shot using just real-time (not time-lapse) videos, is from February 2019. It is from my AmazingSky YouTube channel.
The video presents the aurora much as the eye saw it, and as it appears when it dances.
This is a 360º panorama of the all-sky aurora of February 10, from the Churchill Northern Studies Centre. This is a panorama of 9 segments, each 15 seconds with the TTArtisan 11mm lens at f/2.8 on the Canon R6 at ISO 1600.
However, I tend now to shoot mostly panoramas, as above, from this year’s visit. They can take in the full show across the sky, in high-resolution images suitable for framing!
May 10 — The Great May Display
The aurora apps were beeping this day, warning a great display was in the offing. The composite satellite image below from NOAA shows the actual extent of the aurora around the Northern Hemisphere during the great display of May 10/11 .
Note how the auroral oval is indeed an oval and how the centre is not the geographic North Pole. It is the North Geomagnetic Pole, in the High Arctic of Canada. 🇨🇦 So the oval dips down farther south over North America than it does over Europe.
Image courtesy of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The May 10 solar storm rated a top “G5” on the G1 to G5 storm scale, while the “Kp”geomagnetic disturbance index reached Kp8 on the Kp0 (nothing) to Kp9 (OMG!) scale.
I gave a talk at a local community art gallery that evening, and alerted the audience to the likelihood of fine aurora later that night. Sure enough, I got home in time to see the sky already lighting up with aurora in the twilight and behind the clouds.
This was the multi-coloured curtain to the south during the great display of May 10. This is a 10-second exposure with the Laowa 15mm lens at f/2.8 on the Canon Ra at ISO 1600.
The clouds cleared off enough to reveal one of the most colourful shows I’d seen in many years. This time there was no question about seeing reds and vivid pinks with the unaided eye. This was the type of show everyone hopes for. But it takes a Kp6 show and higher to spark it.
This was the view as the aurora suddenly brightened and converged at the zenith for a superb corona effect. This lasted no more than a minute before it dimmed and subsided again. This is a 9-second exposure with the Laowa 7.5mm circular fisheye lens at f/2 on the Canon R5 at ISO 800.
And a music video of the May 10 display incorporating time-lapse and real-time video footage is on my YouTube channel, with the clickable link below. Do enlarge to full screen.
One of the most remarkable aspects of this show was the blue auroras later in the night (shown below), created by sunlight illuminating the upper curtains and reacting with atmospheric nitrogen. The usual auroral greens and reds are from oxygen. Pinks are also from nitrogen. Blues are less common, but were in abundance this night.
This is a 360° panorama of the May 10/11 aurora exhibiting vertical blue and magenta rays across the western (left), northern (bottom), and eastern (right) sky, and an odd bright patch to the south at top. This was toward the end of the main activity this night, at about 2:30 am. This is made of 20 segments, each 13-second exposures, with the Laowa 15mm lens at f/2 on the Canon Ra at ISO 800.
Auroras around summer solstice, June 21, can be more colourful and often blue, as the Sun lights the upper atmosphere all night. I saw blue auroras again later in the summer.
July — NLCs and Classic Auroral Arcs
June and July are normally when we in western Canada get good displays of another northern mid-latitude phenomenon, noctilucent clouds (NLCs).
This shows sunlit noctilucent clouds in the northwest in the summer twilight, and as the waxing crescent Moon sets at left. This was July 9 at 11:45 pm MDT, in a panorama of 5 segments, each a 30-second exposure with the Canon RF24-105mm lens at f/4 and 58mm on the Canon R5 at ISO 400.
These are ice clouds at 80 km altitude (almost in space) that are lit by sunlight all night long. I saw only a couple of displays of NLCs this year, and it wasn’t for lack of trying and clear nights, even amid forest fire smoke. The panorama above is from home on July 9, over a yellow canola field. NLC season always coincides with peak canola colour time!
Might NLCs be suppressed by high solar activity? There’s some data that suggests they are. However, we weren’t getting many auroras either in early summer.
A 180° panorama of the surprise aurora of July 25, as there was little indication in the days before that an aurora was possible this night. This is a panorama of 6 segments, with the Viltrox 16mm lens at f/2 on the Nikon Z6III at ISO 800, each 8-second exposures.
But at the end of July the Northern Lights returned for some classic shows of arcs across my northern sky, first on July 25 (above), with a prominent sunlit blue/purple ray at left by the Big Dipper. The Kp Index reached Kp5 this night, which is enough to produce a good display from my location in southern Alberta. The Moon is rising at right.
A 180° panorama of the Kp5-level aurora on July 29, with a green arc, and magenta and red rays. This is a panorama of 8 segments, each 30-second exposures with the Viltrox 16mm at f/2 on the Nikon Z6III at ISO 800.
Then again, four nights later on July 29, an auroral arc appeared across the north, this one with reds mixing with greens to create a yellow band in the east, as well as blue and magenta tops to the green arc that follows the curve of the auroral oval.
August 1 — STEVE Appears
While June and July were quiet months, August made up for them.
Of all the auroras this year, only this one, on August 1, produced a showing of STEVE, at least as best I saw in 2024. He can be elusive and easily missed!
This is a capture of a faint appearance of a STEVE-like arc during the Kp5 aurora of July31/Aug 1. This was at 12:10 a.m. MDT, so on Aug 1. The camera recorded the pinkish rays at right which are likely STEVE arcs below a more diffuse and fainter red band which may be a SAR, a Stable Auroral Red arc.
STEVE is the odd arc, often white or mauve, that appears southward of the main aurora (from here in the Northern Hemisphere), typically after a show has peaked, then subsided and retreated back north, as it did above.
STEVE stands for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement, as it is caused by horizontally flowing hot gas, and so is not, by definition, a true aurora created by energetic particles raining vertically down magnetic field lines.
For a classic showing of STEVE see my video, above, from August 2022. High-resolution 4K video I shot this night formed the basis for a scientific research paper, as it revealed structures in STEVE no one had seen before.
This is a capture of a brief appearance of a STEVE arc in the west during the Kp5 aurora of July31/Aug 1. This was at 1:10 a.m. MDT, so on Aug 1. The mauve STEVE arc was visible for about 15 minutes before it gradually faded. The green picket fence fingers, which were visible to the eye but colourless, appeared only a minute or so before this image and were gone no more than 2 mnutes later.
STEVEs are often accompanied by green “picket fence fingers” hanging down from the mauve arc. These fingers are more akin to normal auroras, but are created by particles from the STEVE band raining down local magnetic field lines. They do not come from far out in space as they do in a normal aurora!
August 4 — A Coronal Outburst
On the night of August 3/4 I was able to join a photo tour run by local photographer Neil Zeller, to shoot Milky Way nightscapes. Escaping clouds, we ended up at a scenic spot south of Medicine Hat, Alberta, called Red Rock Coulee.
A 180° panorama of a Kp5-level aurora on a partly cloudy night, August 3/4. This was looking to the northeast at 3:00 am from a side road off the Trans-Canada Highway in southern Alberta just east of Brooks.
On the way home, the aurora began to let loose behind the clouds. We stopped once off the highway as the aurora brightened in an arc across the northeast, above.
A bright auroral curtain sweeps from the zenith down the western sky, as the sky brightens with the blue of a dawn twilight. This was the morning of August 4, with a Kp5 to 6 level aurora underway. The location was just off Highway 1 between Brooks and Bassano, Alberta. This is a single 13-second exposure with the Viltrox 16mm lens at f/2 on the Nikon Z6III at ISO 400.
We stopped again later, now at 4 am, and marvelled as the curtains converged at the zenith in the finest manifestation an aurora can produce, a swirling zenith “corona.”
A music video from August 4, using just a single real-time video, not a time-lapse, is above. It shows almost the full but brief appearance of the corona, just as the eye saw it looking straight up!
My plan was to shoot the annual Perseid meteor shower that was to peak on Sunday, August 11, from the same spot I shot it in 2016.
A 270° panorama of the aurora in the evening twilight on August 11, from the 70 Mile Butte trailhead in Grasslands National Park, West Block near Val Marie, Saskatchewan. This is a panorama of 11 segments, each 15 seconds with the Laowa 15mm lens at f/2.8 on the Canon R5 at ISO 800.
The aurora had other plans. Again, as it did on May 10, the sky was lighting up with colours as it darkened in the evening twilight, above.
This is a 360° all-sky panorama of the Kp6 to 7-level aurora on August 11, from Grasslands National Park. This is a panorama of 12 segments, each 4 seconds with the Laowa 15mm lens at f/2 on the Canon R5 at ISO 4000.
The aurora expanded to fill the sky, and with odd fragmented bits, shown above. My trio of cameras set up for the meteor shower got repurposed into taking aurora time-lapses, stills, and panoramas. And selfies! — the title slide for this blog was from this memorable night at Grasslands.
The aurora was bright enough during this substorm outburst at 12:15 am that the red and green colours could be seen with the eye, though they were subtle. This is a 2-second exposure with the Laowa 15mm lens at f/2 on the Canon R5 at ISO 3200.
A notable moment was at midnight when, even to the eye, the sky to the east suddenly turned red, and a wave of crimson aurora quickly swept in. The reds from oxygen mix with the more usual auroral greens, also from oxygen, to create areas of yellow in the sky.
This was also peak night for the 2024 Perseid meteor shower. One bright Perseid meteor shoots down the Milky Way in Cygnus at top, amid the converging rays of the aurora at the magnetic zenith. This is with the Laowa 10mm lens at f/2.8 on the Nikon Z6III at ISO 6400 for 2 seconds.
A few still frames in the time-lapses did manage to catch a Perseid meteor or two, as above, embedded in the vivid curtains of light. But the meteors were upstaged by the Northern Lights this night.
A music video of this show is above, also on my YouTube channel (it’s been a busy year!). Using only time-lapses, it captures the sudden arrival of the red sub-storm, sped up to be sure, but it seemed that quick!
August 30 — From Onset to Recovery
This night I was hoping to shoot deep-sky objects with telescopes I was testing at home. Again, the aurora had other ideas.
This view is looking north, but the fisheye lens is taking in much of the sky. The August 30 show was somewhat unexpected, though there were last-hour warnings a sky-covering display might be possible. This is a single 4-second exposure with the TTArtisan 7.5mm fisheye lens at f/2 on the Nikon Z6III at ISO 3200.
As the movie shows, a band of Lights across the north early in the evening promised to develop. So I set up a time-lapse camera and fisheye lens to capture, for once, a complete development of an aurora, from a diffuse band, to the onset of an active sub-storm outburst which occurred, as they often do, at midnight when we are looking down Earth’s magnetic tail at the source of the aurora particles.
As the video shows, the storm then subsides and the aurora changes character. During the post-sub-storm “recovery phase,” usually when we are under the dawn sector of the auroral oval, an aurora can switch to a pulsating effect with patches of aurora flashing off and on and flaming up to the zenith. This form of aurora is caused by electrons trapped in the Van Allen radiation belts that are bouncing back and forth from pole to pole.
The music video of this show, above, uses a mix of time-lapses and real-time videos shot with the 360º 7.5mm fisheye lens. It’s a great aurora lens for capturing it all!
September 16 — A Colourful All-Sky Show
Auroras are often most frequent, active, and bright around the spring and autumn equinoxes, when the magnetic field lines of Earth and interplanetary space better connect. It’s called the Russell-McPherron Effect.
This is a 360° panorama from left (southeast) to right (northeast) and extending from the horizon to the zenith, taking in the entire sky during an outburst of a particularly colourful aurora on September 16. This is a panorama of 12 segments, each 4 seconds with the Laowa 15mm lens at f/2 on the Canon R5 at ISO 400.
September 16 (6 days before the autumnal equinox) saw another all-sky show that, for us in western Canada, rivalled May 10. As with the spring show, this aurora was notable for its great range of colours, with nitrogen pinks and magentas mixed in with shades of oxygen yellow-greens and reds.
A darker blue-green band to the south (at left above) during the peak could be aurora from incoming protons exciting hydrogen, not from the usual electrons that excite all other auroras and light up oxygen and nitrogen atoms and molecules.
Yes, there are proton auroras. Another research paper using my images from an October 2021 aurora explored the relationship between proton auroras and SAR arcs (explained below).
This is an all-sky 360° panorama from the horizon at the edges, to the zenith at centre, taking in the entire sky during an outburst of a particularly colourful aurora on September 16. This is a panorama of 12 segments, each 4 seconds with the Laowa 15mm lens at f/2 on the Canon R5 at only ISO 400.
The September 16 show started with a diffuse band which quickly exploded as a sub-storm onslaught of energetic particles arrived to light up the aurora with greater brilliance, colours, and rapid motion. The onset of a substorm can happen in literally just a minute.
Even the nearly Full Moon failed to diminish this show, seen from home under perfect skies. Luckily, the smoky season had abated.
A music video of this night’s show is also above on YouTube. Do click through to watch this and the other videos in full screen mode.
October 10 — Red Aurora from Arizona
Six months to the day after the great May 10 show, the sky erupted again with auroras seen all over the world, even from more southerly latitudes that don’t normally see Northern Lights.
A rare red aurora seen from latitude +32º N from southeast Arizona during the major Kp8-level storm of October 10. This is looking north from the Quailway Cottage near Portal, Arizona and Rodeo, New Mexico. This is a single 15-second exposure with the Canon RF15-35mm lens at 15mm and f/2.8 on the Canon R5 at ISO 1600.
I know because I was at one of those latitudes, in southern Arizona at 32° N. The aurora created the kind of show seen from areas that don’t normally get auroras — a red sky on the horizon. It is these ominous red skies that provoked Medieval fears of divine wrath and myths of armies clashing in the distant North.
Red auroras can also occur in the Southern Hemisphere (as can every other form of aurora) when the aurora australis brightens and extends farther north than normal, lighting up the southern sky red at locations that rarely see the Southern Lights.
In both cases we are seeing just the red tops of distant curtains that mostly lie hidden over the horizon, the red coming from oxygen reactions that can happen only at the rarefied altitudes of 300 to 500 km. Oxygen greens come from 100 to 300 km up.
From Arizona, I saw what many in the U.S. saw this night — a prominent glow, obviously red even to the eye, across the northern horizon. I was missing a far better show at home!
This is a 360° panorama covering the entire sky and extending up to the zenith at centre, capturing a rare SAR (Stable Auroral Red) arc across the Arizona sky in the pre-dawn hours of October 11. This is a panorama of 12 segments, each 30 seconds at f/2.8 with the Canon RF15-35mm lens on the Canon R5 at ISO 3200.
But unique to my more southerly site was this phenomenon, also widely seen across the U.S. and southern Canada.
Accompanying the “normal” aurora to the north was a diffuse red (to the camera) arc across the sky that lasted most of the night. This was a Stable Auroral Red (SAR) arc, created by thermal energy flowing horizontally in the high atmosphere some 400 km up.
SARs have been seen evolving into STEVEs, as the mechanisms seem related. Indeed, one of my images from August 1, shown above, seems to show a SAR/STEVE hybrid.
I set up a wide-angle lens and time-lapse hoping to catch such an evolution first-hand, which would have been of great interest to researchers. Alas, the SAR did not cooperate, stubbornly remaining a SAR all night.
This was the pre-dawn scene from southeastern Arizona on the morning of October 11 that frames a suite of skyglows. This is a panorama of 3 segments, each a stack of 5 x 1-minute tracked exposures with the Canon RF15-35mm lens at 15mm and f/2.8 on the Canon R5 at ISO 1600.
By dawn, with blue sunlight at work, the SAR looked magenta in the twilight, accompanied by two other sky glows:
The pyramid-shaped Zodiacal Light created by sunlight reflecting off cometary and meteoric dust in the inner solar system,
And the winter Milky Way, created by the combined light of distant stars in our section of our Galaxy.
So in one image we have atmospheric, interplanetary, and interstellar sky glows! This was truly an amazing sky, the likes of which I might never see again.
Ending the Year — November in Norway
In early November I headed to Norway to instruct my first aurora group there since 2019. The location was on board a ship, the m/s Nordkapp, a ferry in the Hurtigruten fleet that does 12-day runs along the coast, from Bergen in the south, to Kirkenes in the far north, and back again.
Passengers on board the m/s Nordkapp are watching the Northern Light show on November 9, from the coast of Norway. This is 0.4 seconds at f/1.8 with the Nikkor 20mm lens on the Nikon Z6III at ISO 3200.
We got three nights in a row of active auroras on the northbound voyage. A Kp4 to 5 storm brought the Lights farther south and overhead for us early in the voyage, something we don’t normally see in Norway until we get underneath the auroral oval, which at that longitude in the world lies above the Arctic Circle, north of 66° latitude.
A colourful aurora appears in the darkening evening twilight sky at sea along the coast of Norway on November 9. This is a single 2-second exposure with the 20mm Nikkor lens at f/1.8 on the Nikon Z6III at ISO 1600.
But on November 9, with a storm underway, the show started early, rudely interrupting our group’s cocktail hour as we all rushed up on deck. As it can do, the aurora glowing in a twilight sky took on added tints.
This is a panorama of auroral arcs across the southern sky, with prominent red content contrasting with the oxygen yellow-green bands. Taken on November 10/11 (just after midnight). This is a panorama of 7 segments, each 1.3-second exposures with the Nikkor 20mm lens at f/1.8 on the Nikon Z6III at ISO 3200.
The next night, November 10, as we sailed through the mountainous Lofoten Islands, we were treated to an aurora with lots of red content, above. No two auroras are alike!
An arc of Northern Lights points the way into the narrow Trollfjord in the Lofoten Islands of Norway, as our ship, the m/s Nordkapp enters the fjord at night by searchlight. This is a 0.5-second exposure at f/1.8 with the Nikkor 20mm lens on the Nikon Z6III at ISO 1600.
A curtain of aurora also nicely pointed the way into the short but scenic Trollfjord, a fjord the ship captains like to navigate into for a memorable side trip as we slide through the narrow canyon with seemingly inches to spare.
A music video of real-time aurora sequences shot from on deck during my November 2024 Norway cruise is above on YouTube. Note the phones held high, the way most people now shoot the aurora, and usually with very good success!
What’s Coming for 2025?
We have more to look forward to in 2025.
First, it is likely that the Sun has not peaked, but may undergo a second peak of maximum activity in 2025 or 2026. A double peak is common at many solar maxes. Just look at the graph at the opening of the blog, and the previous peaks of Cycles 23 and 24.
Plus, the most energetic solar flares and storms often occur after the peak on the downward trend of activity. So we could well see more worldwide aurora displays like we had on May 10 and October 10 in the coming two to three years. The show is far from over!
Watch websites like SpaceWeather.com for aurora alerts and news of solar events coming our way.
The Amazing Sky 