Northern Lights – The Amazing Sky

May 18, 2024May 18, 2024

The Great Aurora Show of May 10, 2024

It has been many years since we were treated to an aurora as widely seen as the show on May 10, 2024. Here’s my tale of the great display.

As the sky darkened around the world on May 10/11, 2024, sky watchers in both the northern and southern hemispheres were amazed to see the sky lit by the deep reds, greens and pinks of a massive display of aurora. For me, this was my first Kp8 to 9 show (to use one measure of aurora intensity) in more than 20 years, back in the film era!

Throughout the day, aurora chasers’ phones (mine included) had been beeping with alerts of the arrival of a major solar storm, with the usual indicators of auroral activity pinned to the top of the scale.

A NOAA satellite’s eye view of the ring of aurora May 10/11, showing it south of me in Alberta, and across the northern U.S. People in the southern U.S. saw it to their north.

As I show below, the graphic of the intensity of the band of aurora, the auroral oval, was lit up red and wide. This was a night we didn’t have to chase north to see the Northern Lights or aurora borealis — they were coming south to meet us (as I show above).

**The Kp Index was reading 9 on SpaceWeatherLive**

Observers in the southern hemisphere had the normally elusive aurora australis move much farther north than usual, bringing the Southern Lights even to tropical latitudes in Australia, South America and Africa.

The cause was a massive sunspot group on the Sun which had let off several intense solar flares.

Sunspot group 3664 was so big it could be seen with the naked eye, using solar eclipse glasses. Photo courtesy NASA.

The flares had in turn blown off parts of the Sun’s atmosphere, the corona, that anyone who saw the total eclipse a month earlier had admired so much. But a month later, the corona was being blown our way, in a series of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), to collide with Earth.

A movie of six CMEs blasting toward Earth, captured by the SOHO satellite. Courtesy NASA/ESA.

As it happened I was scheduled to give a community talk in the nearby town early in the evening of May 10, on the topic of The Amazing Sky! Watching the indicators, I could more or less promise the audience that we would indeed see an amazing sky later that evening as it got dark.

Post talk, I hurried home to get the cameras ready, choosing to forgo more hurried driving out to a scenic site in southern Alberta, for the convenience of shooting from my rural backyard. As the sky darkened, the clouds were lit purple, and curtains of aurora appeared in the clear patches.

Clouds and aurora in twilight with the 11mm TTArtisan full-frame fish-eye lens.

A bright arc of aurora shining through the purple clouds, with the 7.5mm TTArtisan circular fish-eye lens.

Something big was going on! This was promising to be the best show of Northern Lights I had seen from home in a year. (Spring 2023 had three great shows at monthly intervals, followed by an aurora drought for many months. See The Great April Aurora.)

A selfie at the start of the great aurora show of May 10, 2024.

I shot with four cameras (a Canon EOS R, Ra, R5 and R6) — two for time-lapses, one for real-time movies, and one for still images. I used the latter to take many multi-image panoramas, as they are often the best way to capture the wide extent of an aurora across the sky.

The arc of aurora in purple and white across the northern sky from home in Alberta at the start of the great display (about 11:30 p.m. MDT).

Early in the evening the arc of aurora wasn’t the usual green from oxygen, but shades of purple, pink, and even white, likely from sunlit nitrogen. The panorama above is looking north toward a strangely coloured arc of nitrogen (?) aurora.

Then after midnight a more normal curtain appeared suddenly, but toward the south, brightening and rising to engulf much of the southern sky and the sky overhead.

Looking south with the 15mm wide-angle lens.

It is at local midnight to 1 a.m. when substorms usually hit, as we are then looking straight down Earth’s magnetic tail, toward the rain of incoming aurora particles bombarding the Earth. During a substorm, the rain turns into a deluge — the intensity of the incoming electrons increases, sparking a sudden brightening of the aurora, making it dance all the more rapidly.

This is a 300° panorama of my home sky now filled with colourful curtains.

As the aurora explodes in brightness it often swirls up to the zenith (or more correctly, the magnetic zenith) to form one of the sky’s greatest sights, a coronal outburst. Rays and beams converge overhead to form a tunnel effect. It is jaw-dropping.

I’ve seen this many times from northern sites such as Churchill and Yellowknife, where the aurora often dances straight up. And from my latitude of 51° N in western Canada, the aurora does often come down to us.

But this night, people at latitudes where, at best, the aurora might be seen just as a glow on the horizon, saw it dance overhead in a corona show to rival the solar eclipse, and that other corona we saw on April 8!

This is a panorama of a substorm outburst creating an overhead corona with rays converging to the magnetic zenith (south of the true zenith), and amid clouds. The rays show a rich mix of oxygen greens and reds, as well as nitrogen blues blending to create purples. Some greens and reds are mixing to make yellows.

Yes, the long exposures of aurora photos (even those taken with phone cameras) show the colours better than your eye can see them (insensitive as our eyes are to colour in dim light). But this night portions of the arcs and rays were bright enough that greens and pinks were easily visible to the naked eye.

This is a single 9-second exposure of the peak of a bright outburst at 1 a.m. MDT. It was with the Laowa 7.5mm circular fish-eye lens at f/2 on the Canon R5 at ISO 800. It is one frame from a time-lapse sequence.

A brief outburst of a substorm created an overhead corona with bright rays converging to the magnetic zenith (south of the true zenith).

At its peak the show was changing rapidly enough, I couldn’t get to all the cameras to aim and frame them, especially the movie camera. The brightest outburst at 1 a.m. lasted just a minute — the time-lapse cameras caught it. The sequence below shows the view in 9-second exposures taken consecutively just 1 second apart.

This series shows a brief outburst of bright aurora at the magnetic zenith overhead. The time between these 7 consecutive 9-second exposures is only 1 second, so this bright outburst did not last long (little more than a minute). With the TTArtisan 7.5mm f/2 fish-eye lens on the Canon R5. Click or tap to enlarge to full screen.

Here’s another sequence of frames taken as part of a time-lapse sequence with the 11mm lens. It shows the change in the aurora over the 80 minutes or so that it was most active for me at my site.

The time between these 12 images is usually 8 minutes, though to include some interesting activity at a bright outburst, the interval is 5 minutes for three of the images around 1 a.m. Each is a 7- or 9-second exposure taken as part of a time-lapse sequence using the 11mm TTArtisan lens at f/2.8 on the Canon R at ISO 800 or 1600.

Shooting time-lapses with fish-eye lenses captures the show with a minimum of attention needed (except to adjust ISO or exposure times when the aurora brightens!). I could use the still camera (with the Laowa 15mm f/2 lens) to take individual shots, such as more selfies and home shots.

This is a single 6-second exposure with the Laowa 15mm lens at f/2 and Canon Ra at ISO 2000.

This is a single 8-second exposure with the Laowa 15mm lens at f/2 on the Canon Ra at ISO 800. Another camera taking a time-lapse is in the scene. I had four going this night.

As colourful as the aurora was at its best between midnight and 1:30 a.m., I think the most unique shots came after the show had subsided to appear just as faint rays across the north again, much as it had begun. To the eye it didn’t look like much, but even on the camera’s live screen I could see unusual colours.

I took more panoramas, to capture one of the most unusual auroral arcs I’ve even seen — a blue and magenta aurora across the north, similar to how the night started.

This a stitch of 11 segments, each 13-second exposures, with the Laowa 15mm lens at f/2 on the Canon Ra camera at ISO 800, and turned to portrait orientation. Processed in Camera Raw and stitched with PTGui.

The colours may be from nitrogen glowing, which tends to light up in blues and purples, especially when illuminated by sunlight at high altitudes. At 2 to 2:30 a.m. the Sun might have been illuminating the aurora at a height of 150 to 400 km, and far to the north.

I’d seen blue-topped green auroras before (and there’s a green aurora off to the west at left here). But this was the first time I’d seen an all-blue aurora, no doubt a product of the intense energy flowing in the upper atmosphere this night. And the season and my latitude.

The panorama is a spherical projection spanning 360º, and reaching to the zenith 90° high at centre. This a stitch of 20 segments, each 13-second exposures, with the Laowa 15mm lens at f/2 on the Canon Ra camera at ISO 800, and turned to portrait orientation. Processed in Camera Raw and stitched with PTGui.

The weirdest aurora was at 2:30 a.m., when in addition to the blue rays of nitrogen, an odd white and magenta patch appeared briefly to the south. What was that??

The lesson here? During a bright show do not go back to sleep when things seem to be dying down. Interesting phenomena can appear in the post-storm time, as we’ve learned with STEVE and other odd red arcs and green proton blobs that we aurora photographers have helped document.

I end with a finale music video, mostly made of the time-lapses I shot this night.

Enjoy!

Bring on more aurora shows as the Sun peaks in activity, perhaps this year. But the best shows often occur in the 2 or 3 years after solar max. So we have several more years to look forward to seeing the Lights dance in our skies.

Watch in full screen and in 4K if you can. For all the tech details click through to YouTube and check the description below the video.

Thanks and clear skies!

— Alan, May 18, 2024 amazingsky.com

April 29, 2023May 18, 2024

The Great April Aurora

On April 23, 2023 the sky erupted with a massive solar storm, bringing the aurora to millions of people around the word.

On April 23 warnings went out alerting aurora watchers that a solar storm was imminent. And as the sky darkened that night locations all across the Northern and Southern Hemispheres were treated to a great sky show.

This is what we want to see in our aurora apps! Code Red and a vast auroral oval.

When we see this on our phone apps, we know we’ll get a great show. This was the auroral oval, lit up red, as the display was underway at my location in Alberta, Canada.

The strength of the interplanetary field (Bt) was high and the direction of the field (Bz) was well south, all welcome indicators of a superb show.

Sure enough, as it got dark that night, and from my location after the clouds cleared, an aurora was underway covering much of the sky.

A fish-eye 360° view of the Great April Aurora of April 23, 2023, from home in southern Alberta, Canada. The Kp level reached 7 to 8 this day. The Big Dipper is above centre. This is looking north. A single 5-second exposure with the TTArtisan 7.5mm circular fish-eye lens at f/2 and Canon R6 at ISO 3200.

The aurora moved south to occupy just the southern half of the sky, but with incredible ribbons crossing from east to west, rippling and pulsating off and on. Seeing patches of aurora pulse off and on and flaming up to the zenith is not uncommon toward the end of a substorm outburst. But this was the first time I can recall seeing pulsating ribbons.

At times, there was a dark ribbon across the sky, as the aurora formed a gap in its curtains, looking like a “dark aurora.”

The view looking straight up is always the most jaw-dropping when an aurora fills the sky. Rays and curtains converge at the magnetic zenith to form a “corona.”

The aurora of April 23, 2023, looking straight up to the zenith to capture the converging curtains in a coronal display. The Big Dipper is at top. A single 3.2-second exposure with the Canon R5 at ISO 800 and Laowa 15mm lens at f/2.

I shot with three cameras, taking stills, time-lapses, and real-time movies. I edited them together here in a music video. Enlarge to full screen to view it. I hope you enjoy it!

A 3-minute video of the April 23, 2023 aurora show from Alberta.

An aurora selfie with the great all-sky Kp6 to 8 level aurora of April 23, 2023. This is looking south toward Arcturus and Spica. The Coma Berenices cluster is at top near the convergence point for the auroral curtains. Shot from home with the Canon Ra and 11mm TTArtisan full-frame fish-eye lens at f/2.8.

With the Sun ramping up in activity, we should get more great shows of Northern – and Southern! – Lights around the world in the next few years,

August 11, 2022May 18, 2024

A Showing of STEVE

On August 7, 2022 we were treated to a fine aurora and a superb showing of the anomalous STEVE arc across the sky.

Where I live in southern Alberta we are well positioned to see a variety of so-called “sub-auroral” phenomena — effects in the upper atmosphere associated with auroras but that appear south of the main auroral arc, thus the term “sub-auroral.”

An arc of a Kp-5 aurora early in the evening just starting a show, but with a fading display of noctilucent clouds low in the north as well.

The main auroral band typically lies over Northern Canada, at latitudes 58° to 66°, though it can move south when auroral activity increases. However, on August 7, the Kp Index was predicted to reach Kp5, on the Kp 0 to 9 scale, so moderately active, but not so active it would bring the aurora right over me at latitude 51° N, and certainly not down over the northern U.S., which normally requires Kp6 or higher levels.

An arc of a Kp-5 aurora over a wheatfield from home in southern Alberta. The panorama takes in the northern stars, from the Big Dipper and Ursa Major at left, to the W of Cassiopeia at top right of centre, with Perseus below Cassiopeia, and Andromeda and Pegasus at right.

So with Kp5, the aurora always appeared in my sky this night to the north, though certainly in a fine display, as I show above.

However, at Kp5, the amount of energy being pumped into the magnetosphere and atmosphere around Earth is high enough to trigger (through mechanisms only beginning to be understood) some of the unique phenomena that occur south of the main aurora. These often appear right over me. That was the case on August 7.

This is a telephoto lens panorama of a low and late-season display of noctilucent clouds in the north on August 7, 2022. This was the latest I had seen NLCs from my latitude of 51° N.

I captured the above panoramas of the aurora early in the night, when we also were treated to a late season display of noctilucent clouds low in the north. These are high altitude water-vapour clouds up almost as high as the aurora. They are common in June and July from here (we are also in an ideal latitude for seeing them). But early August was the latest I had ever sighted NLCs.

A display of a Kp-5 aurora near its peak of activity on August 7, 2022, taken from home in southern Alberta, over the wheatfield next to my acreage. STEVE appeared later this night. Moonlight from the waxing gibbous Moon low in the southwest illuminates the scene.

As the NLCs faded, the auroral arc brightened, promising a good show, in line with the predictions (which don’t always come true!). The main aurora reached a peak in activity about 11:30 pm MDT, when it was bright and moving along the northern and northeastern horizon. It then subsided in brightness and structure, giving the impression the show was over.

But that’s exactly when STEVE can — and this night did! — appear.

A portrait of the infamous STEVE arc of hot flowing gas associated with an active aurora, here showing his distinctive pink colour and the fleeting appearance of the green picket fence fingers that often show up hanging down from the main arc.

Sure enough, about 12:15 am, a faint arc appeared in the east, which slowly extended to cross the sky, passing straight overhead. This was STEVE, short for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement.

STEVE is not an aurora per se, which is caused by electrons raining down from the magnetosphere. STEVE is a ribbon of hot (~3000°) gas flowing east to west. STEVE typically appears for no more than an hour, often less, before he fades from view.

A fish-eye view looking straight up. On this night the green fingers lasted no more than two minutes.

At his peak, STEVE is often accompanied by green “picket-fence” fingers hanging down from the main pink band, which also have a westward rippling motion. These do seem to be caused by vertically moving electrons.

This night I shot with three cameras, with lenses from 21mm to 7.5mm, including two fish-eye lenses needed to capture the full extent of sky-spanning STEVE. I shot still, time-lapses, and real-time videos, compiled below.

Amateur photos like mine have been used to determine the height of STEVE, which seems to be 250 to 300 km, higher than the main components of a normal aurora. Indeed, previous images of mine have formed parts of the data sets for two research papers, with me credited as a citizen scientist co-author.

A closeup of the STEVE arc of hot flowing gas associated with an active aurora.

STEVE is a unique example of citizen scientists working with the professional researchers to solve a mystery that anyone who looks up at the right time and from the right place can see. August 7-8, 2022 and my backyard in Alberta was such a time and place.

A dim Perseid meteor (at top) streaking near the Milky Way on the night of Aug 7-8, 2022, taken as part of a time-lapse set for the STEVE auroral arc in frame as the pink band.

As a bonus, a few frames recorded Perseid meteors, with the annual shower becoming active.

For a video compilation of some of my stills and videos from the night, see this Vimeo video.

A 2.5-minute music video of stills, time-lapses, and real-time videos of STEVE from August 7-8, 2022.

Thanks! Clear skies!

— Alan Dyer, amazingsky.com

October 6, 2019October 6, 2019

The Northern Lights of Yellowknife

Aurora over Prince of Wales Museum, Yellowknife It was a fabulous week of clear skies and dancing auroras in and around Yellowknife in Canada’s North.

For the second year in a row I traveled due north from home in Alberta to visit Yellowknife, capitol of Canada’s Northwest Territories. At a latitude of 62° North, Yellowknife lies directly under the auroral oval and so enjoys views of the Northern Lights on almost every clear night.

During my 8-night stay from September 3 to 10 almost every night was clear and filled with auroras.

Somba K’e Park

The Lights can be seen even from within the downtown core, as the opening image shows, taken from the urban Sombe K’e Park looking over Frame Lake and the Prince of Wales Museum.

The Museum is lit with rippling bands of coloured light that emulate the aurora borealis.

Pilot’s Monument

A favourite urban site for viewing the Lights is the Pilot’s Monument lookout in the middle of Yellowknife’s Oldtown district. This panorama sweeps from northeast at left to west at far right, looking mostly south over the downtown core.

This night even the urban lights were not enough to wash out the Lights as they brightened during a brief substorm.

Panorama of the Aurora Dancing over Yellowknife — This is a 300° panorama of the Northern Lights over Yellowknife, NWT on the night of Sept 6-7, 2019, during a sub-storm outbreak at 12:45 a.m. when the sky went wild with aurora. This is a 9-segment panorama with the 15mm Laowa lens at f/2 and Sony a7III at ISO 800, for 10 seconds each.

Rotary Park

Another good urban site that gets you away from immediate lights is the open spaces of Rotary Park overlooking the houseboats anchored in Yellowknife Bay. This panorama again sweeps from east to west, looking toward to the waxing Moon low in the south.

Again, despite the urban lights and moonlight, the Lights were spectacular.

Aurora Panorama from Rotary Park, Yellowknife — A 240° panorama of the Northern Lights from the Boardwalk in the urban Rotary Park in Yellowknife, NWT, on Sept 10, 2019. A waxing gibbous Moon is bright to the south and lights the sky and landscape. This is a 7-segment panorama, each segment 8 seconds at f/2 with the Venus Optics 15mm lens and Sony a7III at ISO 1600. Stitched with Adobe Camera Raw.

Prosperous Lake

The main viewing sites for the Northern Lights are down Highway 4, the Ingraham Trail east of the city away from urban lights.. One of the closest stops is a parking lot on the shore of a backwater bay of Prosperous Lake. It’s where many tourist buses stop and unload their passengers, mostly to get their selfies under the Lights.

But with patience you can get your own photos unencumbered by other lights and people, as I show below.

Aurora Tourists at Prosperous Lake (Sept 5-6, 2019) — A group of aurora tourists take their aurora selfies at Prosperous Lake, near Yellowknife, NWT, a popular spot on the Ingraham Trail for aurora watching. This was about 1:15 a.m. MDT. This is a single 5-second exposure with the 20mm Sigma Art lens at f/2 and Nikon D750 at ISO800.

Aurora over Prosperous Lake, Yellowknife (Sept 5-6, 2019) — The Northern Lights over the end of Prosperous Lake, on the Ingraham Trail near Yellowknife, NWT, a popular spot for aurora watching in the area. This is a single 8-second exposure with the Sigma 20mm lens at f/2 and Nikon D750 at ISO 800.

On one of my nights I stopped at Prosperous on the way to sites farther down Ingraham Trail to catch the twilight colours in the stunningly clear sky.

Sunset Twilight at Prosperous Lake — Twilight at Prosperous Lake on the Ingraham Trail, near Yellowknife, NWT, Sept. 7, 2019. The colours are accentuated by volcanic ash in the atmosphere.

Madeline Lake

This small lake and picnic site farther along the Trail serves as a great place to shoot the Lights reflected in the calm waters and looking north. I spent one of my nights at Madeline Lake, a popular spot for local residents to have a campfire under the Lights.

Campfire Under the Aurora #2 — Enjoying a campfire on a fine September Saturday night under the brightening Northern Lights, at Madeline Lake on the Ingraham Trail near Yellowknife. This is a single 10-second exposure with the 20mm Sigma lens at f/2 and Nikon D750 at ISO 800.

And it’s popular for tour buses, whose headlights shine out across the lake as they arrive through the night, in this case casting my long shadow across the misty lake.

Selfie Shadow at Madeline Lake with Aurora — A novelty shot of the shadow of me and my tripod projected across a misty Madeline Lake by car headlights from arriving aurora tourists at this popular spot on the Ingraham Trail near Yellowknife. This was September 7, 2019. A single exposure.

Aurora Tourists at Madeline Lake — A group of aurora tourists take in the show at Madeline Lake, on the Ingraham Trail near Yellowknife, NWT, a popular spot for the busloads of visitors being shuttled around each night. The Big Dipper is at centre. This is a single exposure, 6 seconds at ISO 3200 with the Laowa 15mm lens at f/2 and Sony a7III.

However, again with patience it is possible to get clean images of the aurora and its reflections in the lake.

Reflections of the Northern Lights in the calm and misty waters of Madeline Lake on the Ingraham Trail near Yellowknife, NWT on Sept 7, 2019. This is one of a series of “reflection” images. The Big Dipper is at left. Capella is at right. This is a single 13-second exposure with the 15mm Laowa lens at f/2 and Sony a7III at ISO 1600.

Reflections of the Northern Lights in the calm waters of Madeline Lake on the Ingraham Trail near Yellowknife, NWT on Sept 7, 2019. This is one of a series of “reflection” images. The Big Dipper is at left; Capella at far right. This is a single 8-second exposure with the 15mm Laowa lens at f/2 and Sony a7III at ISO 1600.

Aurora over Madeline Lake Panorama (Sept 7, 2019) — The Northern Lights in a subtle but colourful display over the still waters of Madeline Lake on the Ingraham Trail near Yellowknife, NWT. This was the night of September 7-8, 2019. This is a 4-segment panorama, each 13 seconds at ISO 1600 with the Venus Optics 15mm lens at f/2 and Sony a7III camera.

The Ramparts

Farther down the Trail is a spot the tour buses will not go to as a visit to the Ramparts waterfall on the Cameron River requires a hike down a wooded trail, in the dark with bears about. Luckily, my astrophoto colleague, amateur astronomer, and local resident Stephen Bedingfield joined me for a superb shoot with us the only ones present at this stunning location.

Photographer at Cameron River Ramparts — Photographer Stephen Bedingfield is shooting the Northern Lights at the Ramparts waterfalls on the Cameron River, September 8, 2019. This is a single 8-second exposure with the Laowa 15mm lens at f/2 and Sony a7III at ISO 3200.

Aurora over Cameron River Ramparts — The Northern Lights over the waterfalls known as the Ramparts on the Cameron River east of Yellowknife, NWT, on September 8, 2019. This is a single exposure of 20 seconds with the 15mm Laowa lens at f/2 and Sony a7III at ISO 1600, blended with two light painted exposures of the same duration but with the water illuminated to make it more white.

The view looking the other way north over the river was equally wonderful. What a place for viewing the Northern Lights!

Aurora over Cameron River with Autumn Colours — The Northern Lights in an arc across the northern sky over the Cameron River, downriver from the Ramparts Falls. This was September 8, 2019 with the trees turning in their fall colours. The Big Dipper at top centre. This is a two-segment panorama, each 25 seconds at f/2 with the Laowa 15mm lens and Sony a7III at ISO 800. Stitched with ACR.

The view from a viewpoint early on the trail down to the Ramparts and overlooking the Cameron River yielded a superb scene with the low Moon and twilight providing the illumination as the Lights kicked up early in the evening.

Aurora over Cameron River in Moonlight — The curtains of an early evening aurora starting to dance in the twilight and with the western sky lit by moonlight from the waxing gibbous Moon low in the sky and off-frame to the right. This is from the Cameron River viewpoint off the Ramparts falls trail on the Ingraham trail near Yellowknife. This is a single 15-second exposure with the 15mm Laowa lens at f/2 and Sony a7III at ISO 1600.

Prelude Lake

A favourite spot is the major camping and boat launch area of Prelude Lake Territorial Park. But to avoid the crowds down by the shoreline, Stephen and I hiked up to the overlook above the lake looking north. A few other ardent photographers joined us. This was another spectacular and perfect night.

September is a superb time to visit as the lakes are still open and the autumn colours make for a good contrast with the sky colours.

The panorama below takes in the Big Dipper at left, Capella at centre, and with the Pleiades and Hyades rising at right of centre.

Auroral Arc in the Twilight at Prelude Lake — The arc of Northern Lights starting a show in the deep twilight over Prelude Lake on the Ingraham Trail near Yellowknife, NWT. This was September 9, 2019. Light from the waxing gibbous Moon behind the camera also illuminates the scene. This is a 5-segment panorama with the 15mm Laowa lens at f/2 and Sony a7III at ISO 800 and all at 25 seconds. Stitched with PTGui, as ACR and Photoshop refused to joint the left segments.

I used the 8mm fish-eye lens to capture the entire sky, the only way you can really take in the whole scene on camera. When the Lights fill the sky you don’t know which way to look or aim your camera!

A 360° fish-eye view of the Northern Lights over Prelude Lake near Yellowknife, NWT, Canada, on September 9, 2019, with photographers in the foreground shooting the Lights from the viewpoint above the lake. Polaris is near the centre; the Big Dipper and Ursa Major are at lower left; Cassiopeia is at upper right. Andromeda and Pegasus are rising at far right. Arcturus is setting at far left. This is a single shot with the 8mm Sigma lens at f/3.5 on the Sony a7III for 10 seconds at ISO 3200. Moonlight also provides some of the illumination. Accent AI filter applied to the ground with Topaz Studio 2.0

A 360° fish-eye view of the Northern Lights over Prelude Lake near Yellowknife, NWT, Canada, on September 9, 2019. Polaris is near the centre; the Big Dipper and Ursa Major are at lower left; Cassiopeia is at upper right. Andromeda and Pegasus are rising at far right. Arcturus is setting at far left. This is a single shot with the 8mm Sigma lens at f/3.5 on the Sony a7III for 20 seconds at ISO 1000. Moonlight also provides some of the illumination. Accent AI filter applied to the ground with Topaz Studio 2.0

There are many other scenic spots along the Trail, such as Pontoon Lake, Reid Lake, and Tibbitt Lake at the very end of Ingraham Trail. For images and movies I shot last year at Tibbitt Lake, see my blog post at Aurora Reflections in Yellowknife.

But in my 8 nights in Yellowknife this year I managed to hit many of the key aurora spots for photography and viewing. I recommend a visit, especially in September before autumn clouds roll in later in the season, and while the lakes are not frozen and nighttime temperatures are mild.

Here’s a 3-minute music video of clips I shot from all these sites showing the motion of the Lights as it appeared to the eye in “real-time,” not sped up or in time-lapse.

The Northern Lights of Yellowknife from Alan Dyer on Vimeo.

It’s in 4K on Vimeo. Enjoy!

I’ve made my bookings for next year in September!

March 15, 2019

Auroras at Sea

Aurora from at Sea Near Lofotens #1

As I do a couple of times a year, earlier this month I was cruising the coast of Norway chasing the Northern Lights – successfully!

One of my “retirement gigs” is to serve as a lecturer for the educational travel company Road Scholar (formerly Elderhostel) on some of their aurora cruises along the Norwegian coast on one of the Hurtigruten ferry ships.

This time, as I was last autumn, I was on Hurtigruten’s flagship coastal ferry, the m/s Trollfjord.

Aurora over the Norwegian Sea #2 (Feb 27, 2019) — The Northern Lights over the Norwegian Sea south of the small fishing village of Oksfjord, from the Hurtigruten ferry ship the m/s Trollfjord on the northbound voyage from Bergen to Kirkenes. This was during a minor geomagnetic storm producing an all-sky aurora with a Kp Index however of no more Kp 3 – 4 this night. A break in the clouds allowed a glimpse of the Lights for about an hour at 11 pm. This is looking north. This is a single 1.6-second exposure at f/2 with the Venus Optics 15mm lens and Sony a7III at ISO 6400. Ship motion inevitably adds some star trailing.

Our tour group was treated to five fine nights with auroras, an unusually good take out of the 12-day round trip cruise from Bergen to Kirkenes and back to Bergen. Our first look, above, was on February 27, but through cloud.

Auroral Swirls over Båtsfjord, Norway — Swirls of auroral curtains over Båtsfjord, Norway while we were in port on the southbound portion of the Hurtigruten coastal cruise on the ms Trollfjord. This was March 1, 2019. The stars of Taurus and the Pleiades are at left; Cassiopeia at upper right. This is a single 0.8-second exposure at f/2 with the 15mm Venus Optics lens and Sony a7III at ISO 1600.

But after we reached the top end at Kirkenes and turned around for the southbound voyage, skies cleared remarkably. We had a wonderful four clear days and nights in a row, all with Northern Lights.

Auroral Swirls Overhed from the ms Trollfjord — Auroral curtains in an overhead coronal burst swirling at the zenith during a fine display on March 1, 2019, as seen from the deck of the Hurtigruten ferry ship the ms Trollfjord, while in port in Båtsfjord, Norway. The Big Dipper is at upper right; Cassiopeia at lower left, and Polaris in the centre amid the aurora. This is a single 1-second exposure at f/2 with the Venus Optics 15mm lens and Sony a7III at ISO 3200. It was taken from port with the ship stationary and amid the port lights.

The best show was March 1, and when we were in port in the northern coastal village of Båtsfjord. The Lights danced overhead in the best show I had seen from Norway.

Aurora over Skjervøy, Norway — The Northern Lights over the village of Skjervøy on the northern coast of Norway north of Tromsø. Taken from the deck of the Hurtigruten ship the ms Trollfjord while in port, March 2, 2019. Looking west with Cassiopeia at right and the Pleiades at left. This is a blend of two exposures: a long 4-second exposure for the sky and aurora, and a short 0.8-second exposure for the ground and city lights. All at f/2 with the 15mm Venus Optics lens and Sony a7III at ISO 800.

The next night we got a good show while we were in the port of Skjervøy.

As we continued south we emerged out from under the auroral oval zone, placing the Lights to the north, back in the direction we had come from.

A self-portrait on the back deck of the ms Trollfjord, southbound out of Berlevag this night and under the Northern Lights.

Aurora photographers and observers on the rear deck 9 area of the Hurtigruten ferry ship the ms Trollfjord on the southbound voyage along the Norwegian coast, on March 2, 2019. This is a single 1.6-second exposure at f/2 with the 15mm Venus Optics lens and Sony a7III at ISO 6400.

Curtains of Northern Lights over the Hurtigruten ferry ship the ms Trollfjord on March 1, 2019. This is a single 1.6-second exposure at f/2 with the 15mm Venus Optics lens and Sony a7III at ISO 10000.

A low arc of aurora late in the voyage south on March 4, 2019, our last sighting for the cruise, after we crossed the Arctic Circle. A single exposure at ISO 10000 due to the large motion of the ship. The smoke from the ship is at top, illuminated by the funnel lights that were not turned off this night.

An example of multiple concentric auroral curtains, here over the Norwegian coast on the southbound Hurtigruten ship ms Trollfjord on March 2, 2019. This is a single 1.6-second exposure at f/2 with the Venus Optics 15mm lens and Sony a7III at ISO 10000.

Equally spectacular in my mind were some of the sunsets and twilight skies we enjoyed as we sailed through the Lofoten Islands, including on our visit to the narrow Trollfjord fjord for which the ship is named.

Sunset from the Trollfjord — Sunset in Norway from the ms Trollfjord on the southbound voyage, on March 2, 2019.

Trollfjord at Twilight — The mouth of the Trollfjord in the Lofoten Islands, Norway, at twilight taken from the forward Deck 6 of the ms Trollfjord, the Hurtigruten ferry ship named for the narrow fjord. This is a 4-section handheld panorama with the Venus Optics 15mm lens at f/8 and Sony a7III camera at ISO 100. Stitched with ACR.

Alpenglow and Twilight on the Fjords — A panorama of the Raftsundet Strait at sunset with alpenglow on the peaks and evening twilight colours to the right at the sunset point. This was March 3, 2019 on the southbound voyage on the ms Trollfjord as we approached the Trollfjord itself. This is a 7-section panorama, handheld, with the Venus Optics 15mm lens and Sony a7III, stitched with ACR.

On our aurora nights I mostly shot “real-time” video of the Lights, using the low-light capability and 4K functions of the Sony a7III camera. The result is a music video linked to below.

The Northern Lights At Sea from Alan Dyer on Vimeo.

I hope you enjoy it. Do view it full-screen and at 4K resolution.

For details on this cruise (I’ll be on the October 10 trip this fall) see the Road Scholar page for this Arctic Skies trip. Autumn is a spectacular time in the fjords and along the coast, as the mountainsides are in fall colours.

Join me!

February 22, 2019

Non-Stop Northern Lights

Aurora over the Boreal Forest (Feb 8, 2019)

For 11 non-stop nights in February we had clear skies and Northern Lights in Churchill.

Every year in winter I visit Churchill, Manitoba to attend to groups of aurora tourists at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre. Few groups (indeed only two over the 35 years the program has been offered) go away having not seen the Lights during the 5-night program.

Aurora Group at Churchill Northern Studies Centre (Jan 31, 2019) — Guests in the Learning Vacations program at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre view the aurora on their first night of the program for 2019 on January 31. This is looking east, with the Big Dipper at left and Orion at right.

But this year was the opposite exception. Even locals were impressed by the run of clear nights and displays in early February. It was non-stop Northern Lights!

Photographer Shooting the Northern Lights #2 (Feb 8, 2019) — A photographer and volunteer at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre (Brian) shoots the aurora from up the Rocket Range Road at the Centre. This was Feb 8, 2019 on a brutal night with brisk winds and high wind chills. This is a single exposure with the 15mm lens and Sony a7III.

Having auroras in Churchill isn’t unusual. It is located right under the auroral oval, so if it’s clear it would be unusual not to have some level of auroral activity.

Auroral Arcs, Loops and Swirls (Feb 5, 2019) #5 of 5 — One of a short series of images showing the development of an aurora display from a classic arc into a more complex pattern of concentric arcs and with loops and swirls. This was Feb 5, 2019 from the Churchill Northern Studies Centre. The outburst lasted only 5 minutes or so and might have been due to the Bz interplanetary field turning south briefly. After this series, the display faded and fractured into faint arcs and a diffuse glow across the sky. This is a single exposure with the 12mm Rokinon full-frame fish-eye and Nikon D750.

But particles from a coronal hole at the Sun fired up the lights and gave us good shows every night, often starting early in evening, rather than at midnight as is typically the case. The shows pre-empted my evening lectures!

Auroral Arc over Northern Studies Centre (Feb 8, 2019) — A classic arc of aurora over the Northern Studies Centre near Churchill, Manitoba, on Feb 8, 2019. This was a night when both our Road Scholar group and a visiting Natural Habitat group was here. This is a single exposure with the 15mm lens and Sony a7III.

With shows every night, people soon got pretty fussy about what they’d get excited about. Some nights people viewed displays just from their bedroom windows!

Aurora Thru the Dorm Room Window — A view of the weak (by Churchill standards) aurora display on Feb 3, 2019 as seen through my dormitory window at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, to demonstrate how you can see the Lights from your room looking north.

Displays that on night one they would be thrilled with, by night four they were going back to bed awaiting a call later when “it gets really good!”

Aurora over Snowy Trees (Feb 9, 2019) — A band of subtly coloured aurora over the snowy trees of the northern boreal forest, Churchill, Manitoba. This was Feb 9/10, 2019. Cassiopeia is at left. This is looking north. This is a single 6-second exposure with the Venus Optics 15mm lens at f/2 and Sony A7III at ISO 3200.

While auroras were active every night, the Lights showed little in the way of varied colours. Notably absent was any of the deep red from high altitude oxygen. The aurora particles were just not energetic enough I presume, a characteristic of solar minimum displays.

Auroral Arc over CNSC - Feb 2, 2019 — An all-sky aurora over the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, captured with a fish-eye lens, Feb 2, 2019. This is looking northwest. This is a single 8-second exposure with the Sigma 8mm lens at f/3.5 and Sony a7III at ISO 3200.

Increasingly, as we enter into the depths of solar minimum, with a prolonged lull expected for the next few years, aurora chasers will have to travel north to the Arctic and to the auroral oval to see displays on demand. The Lights won’t come to us!

Coloured Curtains over CNSC (Feb 9, 2019) — A display of subtly coloured curtains over the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, on February 9, 2019. The curtains exhibited rapid rippling this night. This is 6 seconds at f/2 with the 15mm Venus Optic lens and Sony a7III at ISO 3200.

We did see fringes of pink at times along the bottom of the auroral curtains from glowing nitrogen molecules, but even this was subtle to the eye, though obvious to the camera.

The nitrogen pinks are usually accompanied by rapid dancing motions that are amazing to watch.

The music video linked to below provides the best view of what we saw. It is made entirely of real-time video, not time-lapses, of the Lights as seen over several nights from the Studies Centre.

The video is in 4K, so do click through for the best viewing. And the Vimeo page provides more details about the video and the techniques.

Enjoy!

The Sky is Dancing from Alan Dyer on Vimeo.

If you are interested in attending one of the CNSC’s sessions — where you eat, sleep, learn, and view the Lights from a well-appointed and comfortable research centre at a dark site, check out the Study Centre’s “Learning Vacations” offerings.

The next sessions for the aurora are a year from now in February and March 2020. I’ll be there!

October 2, 2018October 2, 2018

Aurora Reflections in Yellowknife

Auroral Arc over Tibbitt Lake

The Northern Lights are amazing from Yellowknife, in Canada’s Northwest Territories.

A handful of locations in the world are meccas for aurora chasers. Yellowknife is one of them and, for me, surprisingly accessible with daily flights north.

In a two-hour flight from Calgary you can be at latitude 62° North and standing under the auroral oval with the lights dancing overhead every clear night.

Aurora Panorama at Tibbit Lake #2

The attraction of going in early September, as I did, is that the more persistent clouds of late autumn have not set in, and the many lakes and rivers are not yet frozen, making for superb photo opportunities.

A display of Northern Lights starting up in the twilight, over the river leading out of Tibbitt Lake, at the end of the Ingraham Trail near Yellowknife NWT, on September 8, 2018. This was the start of a fabulous display this night. Capella and Auriga are at left; the Pleiades is rising left of centre; the Andromeda Galaxy is at top. This is a mean-combined stack of 7 exposures for the ground to smooth noise and one exposure for the sky and partially for the reflection, all 25 seconds at f/2.5 with the 14mm Sigma Art lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 1600.

A single image from a time-lapse sequence, of the auroral curtains converging toward the zenith during the display on September 8/9, 2018, from near Yellowknife, NWT. This is 2.5 seconds at f/2.8 with the 12mm Rokinon full-frame fish-eye lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 6400.

A single image from a time-lapse sequence, of the auroral curtains converging toward the zenith during the display on September 8/9, 2018, from near Yellowknife, NWT. The curtains show some fringes of pink from nitrogen. This is 2.5 seconds at f/2.8 with the 12mm Rokinon full-frame fish-eye lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 6400.

A faint green and red auroral curtain to the northwest over Tibbitt Lake on the Ingraham Trail near Yellowknife, NWT. The Big Dipper is right of centre; Arcturus setting on the horizon. This was September 8, 2018. This is a mean-combined stack of 8 exposures for the ground and water to smooth noise, and a single exposure for the sky, all 25 seconds at f/2 with the 15mm Laoawa lens and Sony A7III at ISO 1600.

Lakes down Highway 4, the Ingraham Trail, such as Prosperous, Prelude, and Pontoon are popular spots for the busloads of tourists who fly in every year from around the world.

On one magical night I and my local host and guide, Stephen Bedingfield, went to the end of the Trail, to where the Ice Road begins, to Tibbitt Lake, and had the site to ourselves. The aurora was jaw-dropping that night.

On other nights with less certain prospects I stayed in town, and still got a fine show on several nights, the Lights so bright they show up well even from within urban Yellowknife.

An all-sky display of Northern Lights in the city of Yellowknife, from the end of the boardwalk at Rotary Park looking over the bay. This was on the night of Sept. 10/11, 2018 during a major solar storm, but in the subsiding hours after the sky cleared at about 2 am. The winter stars of Taurus and Gemini are rising. The Big Dipper is at far left. Cassiopeia is at the zenith. The view is looking east at centre. This is a mean stack of 8 exposures smoothed to reduce noise for the ground and one exposure for the sky, all 6 seconds at f/3.5 with the Sigma 8mm lens and Sony a7III at ISO 3200. The focus is soft.

A selfie portrait under an all-sky display of Northern Lights in the city of Yellowknife, from the boardwalk at Rotary Park. This was on the night of Sept. 10/11, 2018 during a major solar storm, but in the subsiding hours after the sky cleared at about 2 am. The Big Dipper is at right. The Summer Triangle is at left. Cassiopeia is at the zenith. The view is looking northwest at centre. This is a mean stack of 6 exposures smoothed to reduce noise for the ground and one exposure for the sky and me, all 6 seconds at f/3.5 with the Sigma 8mm lens and Sony a7III at ISO 3200. The focus is soft.

The Northern Lights over the “United in Celebration” sculpture at the Somba K’e Civic Plaza on Frame Lake in downtown Yellowknife, NWT, on September 14, 2018. The Prince of Wales Museum is at far right. This is a stack of 5 images for the ground to smooth noise and one image for the sky, all 6 seconds at f/2 with the 15mm Laoawa lens and Sony a7III at ISO 400.

A curtain of aurora sweeps over the houseboats moored on Yellowknife Bay in Yellowknife, NWT, on September 11, 2018. The Pleiades and Hyades star clusters in Taurus are rising at left. This is a mean-combined stack of 8 images to smooth noise for the ground and water, and a single exposure for the sky and houseboats themselves (as they were moving slightly from exposure to exposure). Each was 13 seconds at f/2 with the Venus Optics 15mm lens and Sony a7III at ISO 3200.

On another night we chased into clear skies down Highway 3 to the west, to a rocky plateau on the Canadian Precambrian Shield. Even amid the clouds, the aurora was impressive.

Aurora in the Clouds Panorama

But it was the night at Tibbitt that was the highlight.

Here is the finale music video from movies shot that night, September 8, 2018, with two cameras: the Sony a7III used to take “real-time” 4K videos of the aurora motion, and the Nikon D750 used to take time-lapses.

The movie is in 4K. The music, Eternal Hope, is by Steven Gutheinz and is used by permission of West One Music.

Aurora Reflections from Alan Dyer on Vimeo.

Click through to Vimeo for more technical info about the video.

Enjoy! And do share!

And make Yellowknife one of your bucket-list locations.

May 8, 2018May 19, 2018

STEVE Puts on a Show

Steve Auroral Arc over House #2 (May 6, 2018)

The strange aurora named Steve put on a show on Sunday, May 6.

The past weekend was a good one for Northern Lights here in Alberta and across western Canada.

Aurora and Milky Way over Red Deer River

A decent display lit the northern sky on Saturday, May 5, on a warm spring evening. I took in that show from a favorite spot along the Red Deer River.

The next night, Sunday, May 6, we were hoping for a better show, but the main aurora never amounted to much across the north.

Instead, we got a fine showing of Steve, an unusual isolated arc of light across the sky, that was widely observed across western Canada and the northern U.S. I caught his performance from my backyard.

Popularized by the Alberta Aurora Chasers Facebook group, Steve is the fanciful name applied to what still remains a partly unexplained phenomenon. It might not even be a true aurora (and it is NOT a “proton arc!”) from electrons streaming down, but a stream of hot gas flowing east to west and always well south of the main aurora.

Thus Steve is “backronymed” as Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement.

To the eye he appears as a grey arc, not doing much, but fading in, slowly shifting, then fading away after 30 to 60 minutes. He doesn’t stick around long.

The camera reveals his true colours.

Steve Auroral Arc over House #1 (May 6, 2018)

This is Steve to the west, displaying his characteristic pink and white tints.

Fish-Eye Steve #1 (May 6, 2018)

But overhead, in a fish-eye lens view, he displayed ever so briefly another of his talents – slowly moving fingers of green, called a picket fence aurora.

It was appropriate for Steve to appear on cue, as NASA scientists and local researchers who are working on Steve research were gathered in Calgary to discuss future aurora space missions. Some of the researchers had not yet seen Steve in person, but all got a good look Sunday night as they, too, chased Steve!

I shot a time-lapse and real-time videos of Steve, the latter using the new Sony a7III camera which can shoot 4K videos of night sky scenes very well.

The final video is here on Vimeo.

Steve Aurora – May 6, 2018 (4K) from Alan Dyer on Vimeo.

It is in 4K, if you choose to stream it at full resolution.

With summer approaching, the nights are getting shorter and brighter, but we here in western Canada can still see auroras, while aurora destinations farther north are too bright and lack any night skies.

Plus our latitude south of the main auroral oval makes western Canada Steve country!

March 22, 2018

The Northern Lights from Norway

All-Sky Aurora from Norway #1

The skies of Norway provided superb nights of Northern Lights as I sailed the coast.

As I did last autumn, I was able to join a cruise along the Norwegian coast, instructing an aurora tour group from Road Scholar. We were on one of the Hurtigruten ferry ships that ply the coast each day, the m/s Nordnorge, on a 12-day trip from Bergen to Kirkenes at the top end of Norway, then back again to Bergen.

Purple Auroral Curtains in Twilight from Norway — Auroral curtains in twilight on March 14, 2018 from at sea north of Tromsø, Norway, on the Hurtigruten ship the m/s Nordnorge, with the curtains showing a purple tinge at the tops, likely from scattered blue sunlight mixing with the red oxygen colours. The Big Dipper is at centre in a view looking north. This is a single 2-second exposure with the Rokinon 12mm full-frame fish-eye at f/2.8 and Nikon D750 at ISO 8000.

In all, we had three very clear nights, with good auroras on two of those nights. Several other nights had bright auroras but seen through broken cloud.

Aurora Watchers on m/s Nordnorge #1 — Aurora tourists taking in the sky show on March 14, 2018 from the aft deck of the Hurtigruten ship the m/s Nordnorge on the journey south, from a location north of Tromsø this night. This is a single 2-second exposure with the Rokinon 12mm full-frame fish-eye lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 8000.

All observing and photography is done from the ship deck as we sailed among the fjords and sounds along the coast.

Purple Auroral Curtains from Norway — Auroral curtains in twilight on March 14, 2018 from at sea north of Tromsø, Norway, on the Hurtigruten ship the m/s Nordnorge, with the curtains showing a purple tinge to the background sky, likely from scattered blue sunlight mixing with the red oxygen colours. The Big Dipper is at upper left; Orion is at far right; Leo is left of centre, in a view looking south. This is a single 2-second exposure with the Rokinon 12mm full-frame fish-eye at f/2.8 and Nikon D750 at ISO 8000.

The best night was an all-sky display on March 14 seen from north of Tromsø as we sailed back south from our farthest north of 71° latitude.

All-Sky Aurora from Norway #3 — A sky-covering aurora on March 14, 2018, as seen from the Hurtigruten ship the m/s Nordnorge, as we sailed south toward Tromsø, Norway. The view is looking east. The curtains are converging to the zenith at top. This is a single 1.6-second exposure with the Rokinon 12mm full-frame fish-eye lens at f/2.8 and Nikon D750 at ISO 8000.

Earlier, on the trip north, we had a great night as the aurora danced over the Lofoten Islands and we entered the Trollfjord. There is no finer scenery on Earth for framing the Lights.

Entering Trollfjorden with Aurora — A scene from the Norwegian coast and the Loftoten Islands of the aurora over the entrance to the Trollfjorden fjord, from the forward deck of the Hurtigruten ferry ship the m/s Nordnorge. Cassiopeia and Perseus are at left. Vega (brightest) and Deneb are at lower right, high above the northern horizon from this latitude of 68° North. Taken March 10, 2018. I used the 14mm Sigma Art lens at f/1.8 and Nikon D750 at ISO 3200, for a 2-second exposure.

As is the custom, the captain enters the fjord by searchlight, a scene depicted below.

Entering Trollfjorden with Searchlights — A scene from the Norwegian coast and the Loftoten Islands of the aurora over the entrance to the Trollfjorden fjord, from the forward deck of the Hurtigruten ferry ship the m/s Nordnorge. The ship is using its searchlights to mark the entrance to the narrow fjord. Cassiopeia and Perseus are at left. Vega (brightest) and Deneb are at lower right, high above the northern horizon from this latitude of 68° North. Taken March 10, 2018. I used the 14mm Sigma Art lens at f/1.8 and Nikon D750 at ISO 3200, for a 2-second exposure.

I shot very few time-lapses on this trip (unlike my trip in October 2017, which you can see in a music video at a previous blog post).

However, here’s a short music video of two clips I did shoot, including a time-lapse of us approaching the Trollfjord entrance.

As we sailed south, we left the aurora behind. Our last look was of the arc of the auroral oval across the north, seen from south of Rorvik.

Panorama of the Auroral Oval from Norway — A 180° panorama of the sweep of the auroral oval, from due west, at left, to due east, at right, with due north near the image centre. Orion is just setting into the sea at far left. Cassiopeia is at centre. Deneb and Vega are the bright stars low in the sky and circumpolar shining just right of centre. I shot this on the evening of March 16, 2018 from at sea on the coast of Norway south of Rorvik, with the ship sailing south away from the aurora. This was from the aft deck of the m/s Nordnorge, one of the Hurtigruten ferry ships. The latitude was about 63° N. This is a panorama from 8 segments, stitched with PTGui, and shot with the Sigma 14mm Art lens at f/1.8, for a series of 1-second exposures at ISO 6400 with the Nikon D750.

However, for several nights prior we had been under the auroral oval and the Lights had danced for us over the sky.

Norway is one of the world’s best sites for seeing the Northern Lights – the “nordlys” – and taking a Hurtigruten cruise along the coast is a great way to see the Lights and incredible scenery that changes by the minute.

November 16, 2017

Sailing to the Northern Lights

Sailing to the Lights Title

I present a music video of time-lapses of the Northern Lights from Norway, shot from the ship the aptly named m/s Nordlys.

The Nordlys is one of many ferry ships in the Hurtigruten cruise line (the name means “fast route”) that ply the Norwegian coast, with daily departures from Bergen (at latitude 60° N) to Kirkenes at the top of Norway (at 71° N). At the top end of Norway you are under the auroral oval and almost always see some level of auroral activity, if skies cooperate.

This 11-day cruise was blessed with five clear nights with active auroras. I was serving as an instructor for a tour group of 30 from the U.S.-based Road Scholar tour company.

Sailing to the Northern Lights from Alan Dyer on Vimeo.

The final sequence is of the ship entering the Trollfjorden – a narrow fjord often entered in darkness under searchlight. This was a dramatic sight with the aurora dancing overhead.

For a selection of still images from this trip and from the second cruise I did immediately following, see my previous blog post, The Nordlys of Norway.

Technical Info:
All exposures were about 1 to 1.3 seconds only, to minimize blurring during each exposure, shot with the Nikon D750 at ISO 6400, and with mostly the Sigma 14mm Art lens at f/1.8.

One sequence is with the Rokinon 12mm full-frame fish-eye at f/2.8. Intervals were 1 to 2 seconds, providing a rapid cadence.

In assembly I applied a 4-frame blur to smooth the frame-to-frame motion. All processing with Adobe Camera Raw and assembly with the Mac app Time-Lapse from MicroProjects.ca (an app no longer available – a pity).

Music is by the Hollywood soundtrack artists AudioMachine, and is used with permission under “social media” licence. It is the track “Above and Beyond” from their album Tree of Life.

November 10, 2017

The Nordlys of Norway

Nordlys Auroral Red Curtains #1

For the past three weeks I chased the “nordlys” – the Northern Lights – along the coast of Norway up to a latitude of 71° North.

As I type this blog our ship, the Hurtigruten ferry the m/s Nordlys, is rocking and rolling as we cross the Froy Sea off the southern coast of Norway on the way south to Bergen.

We’re completing a cruise up and down the Norwegian coast, the second of two consecutive 11-day cruises I took this autumn as an enrichment lecturer on aurora cruise tour packages offered by the U.S.-based Road Scholar tour company.

It’s been a superb chase up and down the coast – twice! – to catch the Lights. We got a total of 8 clear nights of aurora out of 22, not a bad tally for this time of year.

Here’s a gallery of images, all shot from the ship using a fast lens and high ISO speeds to keep exposures down to about 1 second to minimize blurring from the ship movement.

A participant in the Road Scholar aurora tour in October 2017 watches the Northern Lights from the aft deck of the m/s Nordlys on the Norway coast. The Big Dipper is at centre

Aurora tourists watch and photograph the Northern Lights from the deck of the m/s Nordlys in October 2017 on the coast of Norway.

Watching the Northern Lights from the deck of the m/s Nordlys on October 24, 2017 from the coast of Norway. This is a single exposure of 1 second with the 14mm Sigma Art lens at f/1.8 and Nikon D750 at ISO 6400.

The Northern Lights exhibiting the classic pink colour on the lower edge of the curtains from glowing nitrogen molecules, in addition to the main green tint from oxygen. Taken from the Hurigruten ship the m/s Nordlys north of Tromsø on October 24, 2017. This is a single 1-second exposure with the Sigma 14mm Art lens at f/1.8 and Nikon D750 at ISO 6400. Taken as part of a time-lapse sequence.

The aurora boralis over a bridge in Norway, as per the legend of “Bifrost,” the bridge between heaven and Earth in Norse mythology. Taken from the Hurtigruten ship the m/s Nordlys on October 23, 2017, on the journey between Svolvaer and Tromsø. Taken with the Sigma 14mm Art lens at f/1.8 and Nikon D750 at ISO 6400 for 1.6 seconds, as part of a 450-frame time-lapse.

The sweep of the auroral oval from a latitude of 70° north in the Barent’s Sea off the north coast of Norway, on October 26, 2017. The curtains exhibit a lower pink fringe from nitrogen. Taken from the forward deck of the m/s Nordlys This is a single 2-second exposure with the 12mm Rokinon full-frame fish-eye lens at f/2.8 and Nikon D750 at ISO 6400.

Auroral curtains from the deck of the m/s Nordlys on October 25, 2017, looking northeast toward the Big Dipper at centre. Arcturus is setting at left.

Auroral curtains from the deck of the m/s Nordlys on October 25, 2017, looking northeast toward the Big Dipper at right. Arcturus is setting a left of centre.

The Hurtigruten ship the m/s Kong Harold sailing south and apparently into the aurora, on the Norwegian coast, as we passed the ship as we sailed north.

The scene as the m/s Nordlys exits the narrow Trollfjorden fjord, with the ship’s spotlights lighting the walls of the narrow fjord and with the aurora dancing. Ahead lies the winter sky with Taurus and the Pleiades rising. This was a magical moment indeed, one of the best of the Norway cruise. This is a single 0.8 sec exposure with the 14mm Sigma Art lens at f/1.8 and Nikon D750 at ISO 6400.

Aurora in the moonlight from a nearly Full Moon over the Barent’s Sea off the north coast of Norway, November 5, 2017. This was a very weak Kp 0 to Kp 1 display, yet still showed up in the moonlight. The Moon was in Taurus, with the Pleiades at above the Moon and the Aldebaran to the left of the Moon. This is a single 0.5-second exposure with the 14mm Sigma Art lens at f/1.8 and Nikon D750 at ISO 6400. Taken from the Hurtigruten ship the m/s Nordlys.

A dim but photogenic aurora on November 7, from the coast of Norway on the Hurtigruten ship the m/s Nordlys, in a view looking south to Pegasus and Andromeda, and over off-shore islands. The rising waning Moon off frame to the left illuminates the sky and landscape. This is a single 1-second exposure with the Sigma 14mm Art lens at f/1.8 and Nikon D750 at ISO 6400.

Aurora in the moonlight from a nearly Full Moon over the Barent’s Sea off the north coast of Norway, November 5, 2017. This was a very weak Kp 0 to Kp 1 display, yet still showed up in the moonlight. The Moon is off frame to the right. The Big Dipper is left of centre — we are looking almost due north. Taken from Deck 5, port side, of the Hurtigruten ship the m/s Nordlys This is a single 0.5-second exposure with the 14mm Sigma Art lens at f/1.8 and Nikon D750 at ISO 6400.

A wisp of aurora appears in a break in the clouds as the m/s Nordlys enters Trollfjorden fjord in the Lofoten Islands in Norway, on November 8, 2017. It was actually raining when I took this shot but a major auroral storm was underway and we got a brief glimpse of a curtain as we entered this spectacular and narrow fjord. Then the rain clouds closed in. The bright lights are the ship’s searchlights lighting the walls of the narrow fjord. The white at top is the ship’s smoke. This was from the aft deck looking astern. This was with the 12mm Rokinon fish-eye lens at f/2.8 for 1.6 seconds with the Nikon D750 at ISO 6400.

One of the most memorable nights was on the first cruise when we sailed into the narrow Trollfjorden fjord in the dark with just the ship’s spotlights lighting the fjord walls only metres away from the ship. Above us, the Northern Lights danced. Unforgettable!

The Hurtigruten line operates daily sailings up and down the coast, from Bergen to Kirkenes, up into the auroral oval, which in this part of the world lies at a high latitude above the Arctic Circle. However, the warm gulf stream current keeps the water from freezing and the coast far milder than would be expected for such a high latitude.

This is a trip that should be on the bucket list for all aurora chasers.

October 16, 2017

Conjunctions, Satellites & Auroras, Oh My!

Friday the 13th Aurora Title

October has brought clear skies and some fine celestial sights. Here’s a potpourri of what was up from home.

We’ve enjoyed some lovely early autumn weather here in southern Alberta, providing great opportunities to see and shoot a series of astronomical events.

Conjunctions

Venus & Mars in Close Conjunction #2 (Oct 5, 2017) — Venus and Mars in close conjunction in the dawn sky on October 5, 2017. Venus is the brightest object; Mars is below it; while the star above Venus is 4th magnitude Sigma Leonis. The foreground is illuminated by light from the setting Full Moon in the west. This is a single 1-second exposure with the 135mm lens at f/2 and Canon 60Da at ISO 800.

On October 5, Venus and Mars appeared a fraction of a degree apart in the dawn twilight. Venus is the brightest object, just above dimmer but red Mars. This was one of the closest planet conjunctions of 2017. Mars will appear much brighter in July and August 2018 when it makes its closest approach to Earth since 2003.

Satellites: The Space Station

Overhead Pass of the Space Station in Moonlight — An overhead pass of the ISS on October 5, 2017, with the Full Moon rising in the east at left. The ISS is moving from west (at right) to east (at left), passing nearly overhead at the zenith at centre. North is at the top, south at bottom in this fish-eye lens image with an 8mm Sigma fish-eye lens on the Canon 6D MkII camera. This is a stack of 56 exposures, each 4 seconds long at an interval of 1 second.

The Space Station made a series of ideal evening passes in early October, flying right overhead from my site at latitude 51° N. I captured it in a series of stacked still images, so it appears as a dashed line across the sky. In reality it looks like a very bright star, outshining any other natural star. Here, it appears to fly toward the rising Moon.

Satellites: Iridiums

Twin Iridium Satellite Flares (October 9, 2017) — A pair of nearly simultaneous and parallel Iridium satellite flares, on October 9, 2017, as they descended into the north. The left or westerly flare was much brighter and with a sharp rise and fall in brightness. While it was predicted to be mag. -4.4 I think it got much brighter, perhaps mag -7, but very briefly. These are Iridium 90 (left) and Iridium 50 (right). This is a stack of 40+ exposures each, 2 seconds at 1-second intervals, with the Sigma 24mm lens at f/1.4 and Nikon D750 at ISO 6400.

Often appearing brighter than even the ISS, Iridium satellite flares can blaze brighter than even Venus at its best. One did so here, above, in another time-lapse of a pair of Iridium satellites that traveled in parallel and flared at almost the same time. But the orientation of the reflective antennas that create these flares must have been better on the left Iridium as it really shot up in brilliance for a few seconds.

Auroras

Aurora and Circumpolar Star Trails (Oct, 13, 2017) — A circumpolar star trail composite with Northern Lights, on October 13, 2017, shot from home in southern Alberta. The Big Dipper is at bottom centre; Polaris is at top centre at the axis of the rotation. The bottom edge of the curtains are rimmed with a pink fringe from nitrogen. This is a stack of 200 frames taken mostly when the aurora was a quiescent arc across the north before the substorm hit. An additional single exposure is layered in taken about 1 minute after the main star trail set to add the final end point stars after a gap in the trails. Stacking was with the Advanced Stacker Plus actions using the Ultrastreaks mode to add the direction of motion from the tapering trails. Each frame is 3 seconds at f/2 and ISO 6400 wth the Sigma 14mm lens and Nikon D750.

Little in the sky beats a fine aurora display and we’ve had several of late, despite the Sun being spotless and nearing a low ebb in its activity. The above shot is a composite stack of 200 images, showing the stars circling the celestial pole above the main auroral arc, and taken on Friday the 13th.

Aurora from October 13, 2013 — A decent aurora across the north from home in southern Alberta, on Friday the 13th, October, 2017, though these frames were taken after midnight MDT. 3 seconds at f/2 and ISO 6400 wth the Sigma 14mm lens and Nikon D750.

This frame, from some 1300 I shot this night, October 13, captures the main auroral arc and a diffuse patch of green above that pulsed on and off.

You can see the time-lapse here in my short music video on Vimeo.

Friday the 13th Aurora from Alan Dyer on Vimeo.

It’s in 4K if your monitor and computer are capable. It nicely shows the development of the aurora this night, from a quiescent arc, through a brief sub-storm outburst, then into pulsing and flickering patches. Enjoy!

What all these scenes have in common is that they were all shot from home, in my backyard. It is wonderful to live in a rural area and to be able to step outside and see these sites easily by just looking up!

October 7, 2017

The Aurora Starring Steve

"Steve," the Strange Auroral Arc (Spherical Fish-Eye Projection)

I’ve assembled a music video of time-lapse clips and still images of the fine aurora of September 27, with Steve making a cameo appearance.

The indicators this night didn’t point to a particularly great display, but the sky really performed.

The Northern Lights started low across the north, in a very active classic arc. The display then quietened.

But as it did so, and as is his wont, the isolated arc that has become known as Steve appeared across the south in a sweeping arc. The Steve arc always defines the most southerly extent of the aurora.

Steve faded, but then the main display kicked up again and began to fill the sky with a post-sub-storm display of pulsing rays and curtains shooting up to the zenith. Only real-time video can really capture the scene as the eye sees it, but the fast time-lapses I shot do a decent job of recording the effect of whole patches of sky turning on and off.

The display ended with odd pulsing arcs in the south.

Here’s the video, available in 4K resolution.

Alberta Aurora (Sept. 27, 2017) from Alan Dyer on Vimeo.

Expand to fill the screen for the best view.

Thanks for looking!

June 26, 2017June 27, 2017

Northern Lights Over a Prairie Lake

The Northern Lights dance in the solstice sky over a prairie lake.

This was a surprise display. Forecasts called for a chance of Lights on Saturday, June 24, but I wasn’t expecting much.

Nevertheless, I headed to a nearby lake (Crawling Lake) to shoot north over the water, not of the Lights, but of noctilucent clouds, a phenomenon unique to the summer solstice sky and our latitudes here on the Canadian prairies.

But as the night darkened (quite late at solstice time) the aurora began to appear in the deepening twilight.

I started shooting and kept shooting over the next four hours. I took a break from the time-lapses to shoot some panoramas, such as the headline image at top, capturing the sweep of the auroral oval over the lake waters.

Just on the horizon you can see some noctilucent clouds (NLCs) as well – clouds so high they are lit by the Sun all night long. NLCs sit at the same height as the bottom of the auroral curtains. But they appear here lower and much farther away, which they likely were, sitting farther north than the auroral band.

Arcs of the Aurora and Milky Way — A 360° panorama of the aurora and Milky Way in the twilight sky of a summer solstice evening.

I also shot this 360° panorama (above) capturing the arc of the aurora and of the Milky Way. This is a stitch of 8 segments with a 14mm lens mounted in portrait mode.

I’ve assembled the several time-lapse sequences I shot into a short music video. Check it out on Vimeo here. Click through to the Vimeo page for more technical information on the video sequences.

As always click HD, and relax and enjoy the dancing lights over the calm waters of a prairie lake on a summer evening.

Thanks!

May 31, 2017May 31, 2017

Night of the Great Aurora

Great Aurora of May 27, 2017 – Wide-Angle v5

No one predicted this spectacle. But on May 27 the last-minute warnings went out to look for a fabulous show as night fell.

And what a show it was! As darkness fell the sky was lit with green curtains. After midnight the curtains converged at the zenith for that most spectacular of sky sights, a coronal burst.

As the night began I was at the Rothney Observatory helping out with the public stargazing night.

We saw the Space Station rise out of the west over the Rockies and pass through the Northern Lights.

It then headed off east, appearing here as the streak amid the Lights and light pollution of Calgary.

To continue to shoot the display I, too, decided to head east, to home. I should have gone west, to the mountains.

I drove through rain to get home, and missed the peak of the display, judging by images from others in the Rockies, and those to the north.

But as I got home clouds began to clear enough for a glimpse of the Space Station, on its next pass, flying overhead, again through the aurora. I wonder what the astronauts might have been seeing looking down.

From home, I caught another bright sub-storm outburst to the north, as the curtains suddenly exploded in brightness and rapid motion, with characteristic pink fringes at the bottoms, from nitrogen molecules.

What impressed me about this display was the smell! Yes, you see auroras and some claim to hear them. But this display is one I’ll remember for the springtime scent of lilacs in the night air as the Lights danced.

The Great Aurora of May 27 from Alan Dyer on Vimeo.

Here is a short music video of several time-lapse sequences I shot, of the sub-storm then post-storm subsidence into the patchy flaming and flickering effect that we often see at the end of a great display. And this was certainly one of them.

We southerners were treated to the class of display you usually have to travel north the Arctic and auroral oval to see.

May 24, 2017May 24, 2017

Rivers of Earth and Sky

Shooting at Orkney Viewpoint

The arch of the Milky Way mirrors the sweep of the Red Deer River on a magical night in the Alberta Badlands.

Images of the Milky Way arching across the sky are now iconic. They are almost always assembled from individual frames stitched together to make a seamless panorama.

From the northern hemisphere, spring is the best season to shoot such a panorama as the Milky Way then remains confined to the eastern sky.

Later in summer, when the Milky Way passes directly overhead, panoramas are still possible, but the Milky Way looks distorted. The process of mapping a round sky onto a rectangular image, as I show here, inevitably stretches out the Milky Way near the zenith.

Last Saturday, in search of the Milky Way during prime panorama season, I set up for the night at Orkney Viewpoint overlooking the Red Deer River in the Alberta Badlands north of Drumheller. There, the river performs a grand curve through the valley below.

Above, the Milky Way, often described as a river of stars, sweeps in mirror-image fashion above the earthly river.

Rivers of Earth and Sky — This is a stitch of 8 segments with the Sigma 20mm Art lens, in portrait mode, and Nikon D750. Each 30 seconds at f/2 and ISO 3200. Stitched with Adobe Camera Raw. Taken on a mild and moonless night, May 20, 2017.

The panorama above contains the reflection of stars – of the constellation of Delphinus in particular – in the smooth water on a windless night.

To the north at left, the Northern Lights put on a subtle show. While never spectacular to the eye, the camera records the aurora’s colour and forms that often elude the naked eye.

Aurora over Red Deer River — This is a stack of 4 x 15-second exposures for the ground to smooth noise, and one 15-second exposure for the sky, all with the 20mm Sigma lens at f/2.8 and Nikon D750 at ISO 3200. They were part of a 250-frame time-lapse.

The display was brightest early in the evening – that’s 11 p.m. now in May at my latitude.

The display then faded in intensity before I shot the two panoramas about 1 a.m., but the last few frames of the time-lapse show a final burst of colour from a lone curtain reflected in the river.

Lone Curtain of Aurora over Red Deer River — This is a stack of 84 x 15-second exposures for the ground to smooth noise, and one 15-second exposure for the sky, all with the 20mm Sigma lens at f/2.8 and Nikon D750 at ISO 3200. They were part of a 250-frame time-lapse.

This was a magical night indeed. And a rare one this spring with clouds more often the norm at night.

The next dark of the Moon coincides with summer solstice. So while the moonlight won’t interfere, critical for shooting the Milky Way, the glow of perpetual twilight at my latitude will. The Milky Way will be set in a deep blue sky.

By July’s dark of the Moon the Milky Way will be high overhead, making panorama arches tough to assemble. It looks like this might have been my one best night to capture such a scene this year. But it was a good one.

May 12, 2017May 12, 2017

Meet Steve, the Odd Auroral Arc

Red Auroral Arc #1 (May 10, 2015)

Stargazers in western Canada will have seen him – Steve, the odd auroral arc.

There’s been a lot of publicity lately about an unusual form of aurora that appears as a stationary arc across the sky, isolated from the main aurora to the north. It usually just sits there – motionless, featureless, and colourless to the eye, though the camera can pick up magenta and green tints.

We often see these strange auroral arcs from western Canada.

In lieu of a better name, and lacking a good explanation as to their cause, these isolated arcs have become labelled simply as “Steve” by the aurora chasing community (the Alberta Aurora Chasers Facebook group) here in Alberta.

In a gathering of aurora chasers at Calgary’s Kilkenny Pub, aurora photographer extraordinaire and AAC Facebook group administrator Chris Ratzlaff suggested the name. It comes from the children’s movie Over the Hedge, where a character calls anything he doesn’t understand “Steve.” The name has stuck!

The 270° panorama from March 2, 2017 shows Steve to the west (right) and east (left) here, and well isolated from the main aurora to the north.

This is the view of that same March 2, 2017 arc looking straight up, showing Steve’s characteristic gradient from pink at top though white, then to subtle “picket-fence” fingers of green that are usually very short-lived.

The view above is Steve from exactly 6 months earlier, on September 2, 2016. Same features. I get the impression we’re looking up along a very tall but thin curtain.

Another view of the September 2, 2016 Steve shows his classic thin curtain and gradation of colours, here looking southeast.

Looking southwest on September 2, 2016, Steve takes on more rippled forms. But these are very transient. Indeed, Steve rarely lasts more than 30 minutes to an hour, and might get bright for only a few minutes. But even at his brightest, he usually looks white or grey to the eye, and moves very slowly.

Here’s a classic Steve, from October 1, 2006 – a white featureless arc even to the camera in this case.

So what is Steve?

He is often erroneously called a “proton arc,” but he isn’t. True auroral proton arcs are invisible to the eye and camera, emitting in wavelengths the eye cannot see. Proton auroras are also diffuse, not tightly confined like Steve.

Above is Steve from August 5, 2005, when he crashed the Saskatchewan Summer Star Party, appearing as a ghostly white band across the sky. But, again, the camera revealed his true colours.

Steve Auroras in 2015 from Alan Dyer on Vimeo.

Here are a couple of time-lapses from 2015 of the phenomenon, appearing as an isolated arc overhead in the sky far from the main auroral activity to the north. I shot these from my backyard in southern Alberta. In both clips the camera faces north, but takes in most of the sky with a fish-eye lens.

In the first video clip, note the east-to-west flow of structure, as in classic auroras. In the second clip, Steve is not so well-defined. Indeed, his usual magenta band appears only briefly for a minute or so. So I’m not sure this second clip does show the classic Steve arc.

The origin and nature of Steve are subjects of investigation, aided by “citizen science” contributors of photos and videos.

Local aurora researcher Dr. Eric Donovan from the University of Calgary has satellite data from the ESA Swarm mission to suggest Steve is made of intensely hot thermal currents, and not classic electrons raining down as in normal auroras. He has back-acronymed Steve to mean Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement.

Learning more about Steve will require a unique combination of professional and amateur astronomers working together.

Now that he has a name, Steve won’t be escaping our attention any longer. We’ll be looking for him!

March 4, 2017March 4, 2017

Auroras from Alberta

Aurora Self-Portrait (March 2 2017)

The solar winds blew some fine auroras our way this past week.

Oh, that I had been in the North last week, where the sky erupted with jaw-dropping displays. I could only watch those vicariously via webcams, such as the Explore.org Northern Lights Cam at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre.

But here in southern Alberta we were still treated to some fine displays across our northern sky. The image below is from March 1, from my rural backyard.

Fish-Eye Aurora (March 1, 2017) — A full-frame fish-eye lens image of the aurora on March 1 with curtains reaching up into the Big Dipper.

The Sun wasn’t particularly active and there were no coronal mass ejections per se. But a hole in the corona let a wind of solar particles through to buffet our magnetosphere, stirring up geomagnetic storms of Level 4 to 5 scale. That’s good enough to light our skies in western Canada.

Aurora over Frozen Pond — A 160° panorama of the main auroral oval to the north on March 2 about 11:40 pm MST.

Above is the display from March 2, taken over a frozen pond near home. I like how the Lights reflect in the ice.

This night, for about 30 minutes, an odd auroral form appeared that we see from time to time at our latitudes. A wider panorama shows this isolated arc well south of the main auroral oval and forming a thin arc stretching across the sky from west to east.

Aurora Panorama with Isolated Arc — A 220° panorama of the isolated arc to the west (left) and east (right) and the main auroral oval to the north.

The panorama above shows just the western and eastern portion of the arc. Overhead (image below) it looked like this briefly.

Isolated Auroral Arc Overhead — The overhead portion of the isolated arc at its peak.

Visually, it appeared colourless. But the camera picks up this isolated arc’s usual pink color, with a fringe of white and sometimes (here very briefly) a “picket-fence” effect of green rays.

Isolated Auroral Arc West — The western portion of the isolated auroral arc at its peak.

This is the view of the isolated arc to the west. Erroneously called “proton arcs,” these are not caused by incoming protons. Those produce a very diffuse, usually sub-visual glow. But the exact nature of these isolated arcs remains a mystery.

As we head into solar minimum in the nest few years, displays of Northern Lights at lower latitudes will become less frequent. But even without major solar activity, last week’s displays demonstrated we can still get good shows.

February 3, 2017February 3, 2017

The Sky Was Dancing

Aurora Panorama from Northern Studies Centre #2 (January 29, 201

The Northern Lights once again performed beautifully from Churchill, Manitoba, making the sky dance with colours.

As I do each winter, I spent time in Churchill, Manitoba at the wonderful Churchill Northern Studies Centre, attending to groups of “aurora tourists” there to check an item off their bucket list – seeing the Northern Lights.

Auroral Arcs over Boreal Forest #2

In the 30 years the courses have been presented only one group has ever come away not seeing the Lights. Well, make that two now. A bout of unseasonably warm weather in my first week brought clouds every night. Mild temperatures to be sure. But we want it to be -25° C! That’s when it is clear.

Our first clear night was very clear, affording us a wonderful view of the winter Milky Way before the Lights came out. Such a view is unusual from the North, as the Lights usually wash out the sky, which they did later this night. Even here, you can see some wisps of green aurora.

Normal temperatures didn’t return until week 2 of my stay. The second group fared much better, getting good displays on 4 of their 5 nights there, more typical of Churchill.

A few determined die-hards from Group 1 (here shooting the Lights) stayed on a couple of more nights, and were rewarded with the views they had come for. They were happy!

In the images here, at no time did the auroral activity exceed a level of Kp 3 (on a scale of 0 to 9) and was often just Kp 1 or 2. Farther south no one would see anything. But at latitude 58° N Churchill lies under the auroral oval where even on quiet nights the aurora is active and often spectacular.

In speaking to a Dene elder who presents a cultural talk to each of the CNSC groups, Caroline said that to the Dene of northern Canada their word for the Lights translates to “the sky is dancing.” Wonderful! It did for us.

The Auroras of Churchill from Alan Dyer on Vimeo.

This music video presents a montage of time-lapse movies I shot over four nights, from January 25 to 29, 2017. They provide an idea of what we saw under the dancing sky.

As usual, choose HD and enlarge to full screen to view the movie. Or go to Vimeo with the V button.

October 6, 2016October 6, 2016

A Night at Police Outpost

Milky Way in Twilight at Police Outpost Park

It was a perfect night at a dark site in southern Alberta. The Milky Way shone to the south and aurora danced to the north.

I had scouted out this location in June and marked it on my calendar to return in the fall when the centre of the Milky Way would be well-placed to the southwest.

The site is Police Outpost Provincial Park, named for the North West Mounted Police fort that once occupied the site, guarding Canada’s sovereignty in the late 1800s.

One result from the night of shooting is the opening image, the first frame from a time-lapse taken while deep blue twilight still coloured the sky. The main peak is Chief Mountain in Montana.

Twilight Aurora at Police Outpost — A fairly mild dispay of aurora in the darkening deep blue twilight over the lake at Police Outpost Provincial Park, in southern Alberta, on September 26, 2016, with the stars of Perseus rising, and with Capella low in the northeast at centre. This is a stack of 4 x 20 second exposures for the dark ground and water to smooth noise and one 20-second exposure for the sky, all with the 25mm Canon lens at f/2.8 and Canon 6D at ISO 2000.

To the north an aurora display kicked up over the lake. While it never got very bright, it still provided a photogenic show over the still waters.

Aurora over Police Outpost Lake — A fairly mild dispay of aurora over the lake at Police Outpost Provincial Park, in southern Alberta, on September 26, 2016, with the stars of Auriga and Taurus rising, including the Pleiades at upper right. The Hyades in Taurus are the most prominent stellar reflections at lower right, in the still water this evening. Capella is the bright star above centre; Aldebaran is at right. This is a stack of 4 x 20 second exposures for the dark ground to smooth noise and one 20-second exposure for the sky and water, all with the 25mm Canon lens at f/2.2 and Canon 6D at ISO 3200.

The waters were calm on this windless night (rare for southern Alberta), and so reflected the stars and Northern Lights beautifully.

Big Dipper Reflection — The Big Dipper reflected in the still waters of the lake at Police Outpost Provincial Park, in southern Alberta, on September 26, 2016, with an aurora to the north at right. Only in autumn can one shoot the Dipper reflected in the water in the evening sky, as it is then riding low along the northern horizon. This is from a latitude of 49° N where the Dipper is circumpolar. This is a stack of 4 x 25 second exposures for the dark ground to smooth noise and one 25-second exposure for the sky and water, all with the 25mm Canon lens at f/2.2 and Canon 6D at ISO 3200.

Here, the Big Dipper reflects in the lake as we look north to the Lights. The movie below compiles still images and two time-lapse sequences, of the Lights and Milky Way. The sounds are the natural sounds I recorded on site, as flocks of geese were getting ready to migrate and the owls hooted.

Enjoy! — As always, for the best view, enlarge to full screen or click through to Vimeo with the V button.

September 20, 2016September 20, 2016

Harvest Aurora

With the harvest in full swing, the aurora and Moon lit the fields on a clear September evening.

This night, September 19, showed prospects for a good display of Northern Lights, and sure enough as it got dark a bright, well-defined arc of Lights danced to the north.

I headed off to some photogenic spots near home, on the prairies of southern Alberta. By the time I got in place, the aurora had already faded.

However, the arc still photographed well and provided a great backdrop to these rural scenes. The rising Moon, then 3 days past full, lit the foreground. In the lead image, lights from combines and trucks working the field behind the bins are at left.

Aurora and Harvest Moon at the Old Barn — A diffuse arc of aurora and the rising waning gibbous Moon light the sky over the old barn near home at harvest time, September 19, 2016. The glows from Strathmore and Calgary light the clouds to the west at far left. The Big Dipper shines over the barn, with Capella and the stars of Perseus at right. The Pleiades are rising to the left of the Moon. This is a panorama of 5 segments, with the 20mm lens and Nikon D750. Stitched with ACR.

The image above was from later in the night, just down the road at a favourite and photogenic grand old barn.

Big Dipper and Aurora over Old Barn #1 — The Big Dipper and a diffuse aurora over the old barn near home, in southern Alberta, on September 16, 2016. The waning gibbous Moon off camera at right provides the illumination. This is a stack of 4 exposures, averaged, for the ground to smooth noise and one exposure for the sky to keep the stars untrailed. All 13 seconds at f/2.8 with the Sigma 20mm lens, and ISO 1600 with the Nikon D750. Diffraction spikes on stars added with Noel Carboni’s Astronomy Tools actions.

Note the Big Dipper above the barn. A waning and rising Moon like this is great for providing warm illumination.

The time around equinox is usually good for auroras, as the interplanetary and terrestrial magnetic fields line up better to let in the electrons from the Sun. So perhaps we’ll see more Lights, with the Moon now gradually departing the evening sky.

September 7, 2016September 7, 2016

Sweep of the Auroral Oval

Arc of the Northern Lights

The aurora has been lighting up our skies a lot in recent nights, in a great sweeping arc across the northern sky.

It’s been a good week or so for Northern Lights, with several nights in a row of fine displays. These images are from one night, taken near home in southern Alberta, on September 2.

The lead image at top shows the display at its best, with the arc of curtains reflected in a nearby pond. The green curtains fade to shades of magenta as they tower into the high atmosphere, as one process of glowing oxygen giving off green light transitions to another emitting red light.

Concentric Arcs of the Auroral Oval — A 180° panorama of the Northern Lights exhibiting classic concentric ars across the north, with an isolated arc to the east at far right. This is a stitch of 10 segments, each 2-second exposures with the 20mm Sigma Art lens at f/1.6 and Nikon D750 at ISO 3200. Stitched with PTGui.

A little later the curtains had changed form, into a more homogenous arc above a set of sharper curtains below that are farthest north. People in northern Alberta or the Northwest Territories would have been seeing these curtains dancing above them.

What we are seeing is the classic curving arc of the auroral oval, the ring of light created by electrons raining down into our atmosphere in roughly an oval sweeping across the continent and centred on the magnetic pole in the Canadian Arctic.

However, at right, you can see a odd detached bit of more southerly aurora, with a dominant red colour.

Isolated Auroral Arc #2 (Sept 2, 2016) — An isolated auroral arc to the east on September 2, 2016, shot from near home during a fine display with active curtains to the north at left. A single 8-second exposure with the 20mm lens at f/1.4 and Nikon D750 at ISO 3200.

This is a closeup, showing the characteristic form of these odd “isolated arcs” — usually featureless, often thin, without much motion, and often red.

Isolated Auroral Arc #4 (Sept 2, 2016) — An isolated auroral arc to the west on September 2, 2016, shot from home during a fine display with active curtains to the north. A single 13-second exposure with the 20mm lens at f/1.4 and Nikon D750 at ISO 3200.

Later, the arc had brightened and expanded to cross the sky. The above view is looking west from home, with the arc now displaying a mix of pink, white and green.

Isolated Auroral Arc #3 (Sept 2, 2016) — An isolated overhead auroral arc on September 2, 2016, shot from home during a fine display with active curtains to the north. The Summer Triangle stars stand out here due to high cloud fuzzing their images. A single 13-second exposure with the 20mm lens at f/1.4 and Nikon D750 at ISO 3200.

Here, we are looking up the isolated arc, with the impression of it being a thin sheet seen at an angle, with the bottom green component being closest and the red top being highest and farthest away.

Isolated Auroral Arc #5 (Sept 2, 2016) — An isolated auroral arc to the southeast on September 2, 2016, shot from home during a fine display with active curtains to the north. This one displays the classic picket fence apperarance, with fingers of green aurora that moved along the band during a time-lapse of the scene. A single 13-second exposure with the 20mm lens at f/1.4 and Nikon D750 at ISO 3200.

This is the view looking southeast to the strange aurora. For a time it broke up and displayed a “picket fence” formation. And it moved!

Just what these isolated arcs are is a mystery. They have been called “proton arcs,” under the assumption they are caused by incoming protons, not electrons. But while there are such things as proton arcs and auroras, they are diffuse and invisible to the eye and camera in normal visible light. So these features are not proton arcs.

Nevertheless, these odd arcs are not like the usual auroral curtains, and likely have a different origin. But just what is still the object of research. Images by amateur astronomers such as these can help in the study.

July 18, 2016

Rainbows, Lightning, and Sunsets, Oh My!

Lightning and Rainbow at Sunset

The sky presented a pyrotechnic display of light and colour in the sunset sky.

What a show tonight, July 18, as a thunderstorm lit the sky with bolts of lightning. As the storm retreated, the Sun broke through, ideal lighting for a rainbow. In this case I was able to capture the rainbow pierced by bolts of lightning. See below for tech details.

A little later, the sunlight got stronger and the rainbow grew to span the sky, in a beautiful display of a double rainbow lit by the red light of the setting Sun.

Double Rainbow at Sunset — A double rainbow at sunset on July 18, 2016 after a pyrotechnic thunderstorm. The low Sun is providing the red lighting, with some shafts of sunlight and shadow converging to the anti-solar point. This is a 2-frame panorama with the 16-35mm lens at 16mm, stitched with Adobe Camera Raw.

As the beams of sunlight lit the clouds, it looked like the rainbow was on fire.

Fiery Rainbow at Sunset — A double rainbow at sunset with the last rays of the setting Sun lighting the clouds and making the rainbow look like its on fire. A single image with the 16-35mm lens.

It has been a stormy start to summer in Alberta, but at times the sky has put on a stunning show. That was certainly the case tonight.

Technical on the Lightning and Rainbow shot at top:

This is a stack of 35 consecutive video frames taken with HD (1920 x 1080) resolution at 30 frames per second with the Canon 6D, and extracted as an image sequence with Photoshop, then processed in Adobe Camera Raw, then stacked with Russell Brown’s Stack-A-Matic into a smart object with maximum stack mode, to accumulate the frames taken over about 1 second into one still frame.

So I could have got this with a single 1-second exposure with the lens stopped way down and a ND filter, but my timing would have had to have been very, very lucky!

March 18, 2016March 18, 2016

The Beauty of the Northern Lights

Beauty of Northern Lights Title

My latest music video includes images, time-lapses and real-time videos of the Northern Lights shot in February and March 2016 in Churchill.

While I’ve posted my recent images of the aurora here and at many social media sites, all the videos I shoot take more work before they are ready to unveil to the public. Videos work best when set to music.

In this case, I’m very pleased to have received permission from EverSound Music to incorporate the music of one of my favourite artists, John Adorney, in my latest music video montage. The selection is If a Rose Could Speak, from his 2013 album The Wonder Well. It features vocals by Daya.

The video incorporates still images, as well as time-lapse sequences, and real-time videos of the Northern Lights.

The all-sky time-lapses are intended to be projected in digital planetarium theatres, recreating the scene on their 360° domes.

Please click on the V for Vimeo button to really see the video well. And select 1080p HD for the best image quality. And do share!

ABOUT THE VIDEO

I shot all scenes at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, near Churchill, Manitoba, on the shore of Hudson Bay at a latitude of 58° North. Churchill’s location places it under the usual location of the auroral oval, providing spectacular displays of Northern Lights even on nights when locations to the south are seeing nothing.

I was at the CNSC to present sets of 5-night aurora viewing programs to guests from across North America. Click the link above for more details on their programs. The 2016 aurora season is over, but we’ll have more aurora programs in January and February of next year.

TECHNICAL

I shot all images with Canon 6D and Nikon D750 DSLR cameras, usually at ISO 3200. The fish-eye all-sky sequences were with a Sigma 8mm lens on the Canon, while most of the still images and other full-frame time-lapses were with the Sigma 20mm Art lens on the Nikon. For the “rapid-cadence” time-lapses I used 1- to 2-second exposures at an interval of one second.

The real-time video clips were with the Nikon – set to ISO 25600 – and the Sigma wide open at f/1.4. While these clips are prone to digital noise, they do record the fast movement and subtle colour of the aurora much as the eye saw it. See my earlier music video with real-time clips shot February 12 for more examples of these.

The all-sky sequences were processed through LRTimelapse v4 software, to handle the huge range in brightness of the Lights. Real-time video clips were processed in Photoshop with the Camera Raw filter.

Temperatures ranged from a bitter -35° C to just (!) -15° C on most nights.

I kept the long-duration, all-sky, time-lapse camera going by placing it in a Camera Parka (www.atfrostedlens.com) and inserting disposable hand warmer packs inside the insulated parka. It worked very well, making it possible to shoot for up to 3 hours. Without it, the battery died after an hour.

March 9, 2016March 9, 2016

An Amazing Night of Northern Lights

Aurora Panorama over Northern Studies Centre

It was a night to remember, when the sky exploded with a jaw-dropping display of Northern Lights.

Warnings went out around the world and the aurora meters were hitting high numbers. By sunset we were charged up with high expectations of seeing the aurora in high gear dancing in the twilight. We were not disappointed.

From our location at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre near Churchill, Manitoba (latitude 58° North), we see aurora almost every clear night, even when indicators are low.

But this night, the Index was reading 7 on the scale of 0 to 9. I was afraid, after all the effort to come north to see the Lights, the Lights would abandon us and head south. Not so!

The night did start with the Lights in the south, as shown in the panorama image at top. It takes in a full 360°, with the aurora arcing from east to west across the southern sky in Orion. The north over the Centre is clear.

But the curtains soon moved back north and engulfed most of our sky for most of the rest of the night.

Participants in our aurora tour group took their aurora “selfies,” and just looked up in awe at one of nature’s great sky shows. When the last of the group turned in at 2:30 a.m. the Lights were still going.

What follows is a selection — just a few! — of the still shots I took. I also shot time-lapse sequences and real-time videos. All those will take more editing to turn them into a music video, still to come.

Enjoy!

Aurora Watcher with Twilight Curtains (March 6, 2016) — A lone observer gazes skyward at the start of a wonderful aurora display on March 6, 2016, as the curtains begin to appear and dance in the deep blue twilight. This was at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, Churchill, Manitoba.

Gazing at a Colourful Twilight Aurora — A lone observer gazes at an array of colourful curtains of aurora during an active display, March 6, 2016, with curtains in the evening twilight adding blue tints to the sky and tops of the curtains, as well as the greens and reds from oxygen. Curtains toward the horizon are more yellow due to atmospheric extinction. Jupiter is rising at left, then near opposition.

Converging Colourful Curtains of Aurora — Auroral curtains converge at the zenith in the evening twilight during a Kp Index 7 night of aurora in Churchill, Manitoba. Blue twilight adds the blue tints to the sky and curtains.

CNSC Group with Purple Aurora (March 6, 2016) — Our group of Learning Vacations tourists enjoy the start of a fine display of Northern Lights at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, March 6, 2016. As curtains appear to the east, another array of curtains shines to the west behind them with a strong purple tint lighting the sky and ground. The Andromeda Galaxy sits amid the curtains.

Aurora Watchers at CNSC (March 6, 2016) — Aurora watchers looking south to a bright curtain of Northern Lights while other curtains rippled behind them to the north. This was a fabulous all-sky display, March 6, 2016. The temperature was about -25° C.

Green Aurora over Green Snow — The green aurora lights the ground and snow green in a spectacular display March 6, 2016. This is looking northeast from the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, Churchill, Manitoba.

Multiple Curtains of Aurora — A series of curtains of aurora, in a layered series across the sky, from the March 6, 2016 display in Churchill, Manitoba,

Aurora over CNSC (March 6, 2016) — The aurora over the Churchill Northern Studies Centre building, home to Arctic research and to many programs for tourists about northern ecology and science. The March Learning Vacations aurora tour group experienced a fabulous display this night, March 6, 2016.

Aurora Group Outside CNSC (March 6, 2016) — Some of our group of Learning Vacations aurora tourists outside the Churchill Northern Studies Centre enjoying the sky show on March 6, 2016 on a night with a Level 5 to 7 aurora.

Abstract Patterns in a Zenith Aurora — What do you see in the swirling patterns of aurora curtains at the zenith? They rapidly take many forms as they move about. This was the wonderful display of March 6, 2016.

February 17, 2016February 18, 2016

The Northern Lights … As They Appeared

Aurora As It Appeared Title

My 10-minute video captures the Northern Lights in real-time video – no time-lapses here!

I hadn’t tried this before but the display of February 12, 2016 from Churchill, Manitoba was so active it was worth trying to shoot it with actual video, not time-lapse still frames.

I used very high ISO speeds resulting in very noisy frames. But I think the motion and colours of the curtains as they ripple and swirl more than overpower the technical limitations. And there’s live commentary!

Select HD and Enter Full Screen for the best quality.

Scenes have been edited for length, and I did not use all the scenes I shot in the final edit. So the scenes you see in the 10-minute video actually took place over about 20 minutes. But each scene is real-time. They show the incredibly rapid motion and fine structure in the auroral curtains, detail blurred in long multi-second exposures.

I used a Nikon D750 camera at ISO speeds from 12,800 to 51,200. While it is certainly very capable of shooting low-light video, the D750 is not optimized for it. A Sony a7s, with its larger pixels and lower noise, would have been a better camera. Next time!

The lens, however, was key. I used the new Sigma 20mm Art lens which, at f/1.4, is the fastest lens in its focal length class. And optical quality, even wide open, is superb.

The temperature was about -30 degrees C, with a windchill factor of about -45 C. It was cold! But no one in the aurora tour group of 22 people I was instructing was complaining. Everyone was outside, bundled up, and enjoying the show.

It was what they had traveled north to see, to fulfill a life-long desire to stand under the Northern Lights. Everyone could well and truly check seeing the aurora off their personal bucket lists this night.

For more information about aurora and other northern eco-tourism tours offered by the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, see churchillscience.ca

— Alan, February 17, 2016 / www.amazingsky.com

February 12, 2016February 12, 2016

Scenes from Under the Auroral Oval

Classic Curtains of the Auroral Oval

From Churchill, Manitoba the Northern Lights dance almost every night over the boreal forest.

This year, as in the last two years, I have traveled to the shores of a frozen Hudson Bay and to the town of Churchill, Manitoba to view and photograph the aurora borealis.

I’m instructing two tour groups at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, one this week and one last week, in the science and sagas of the aurora and on how to shoot the Lights. The participants in the groups are fabulous, keenly interested and unfazed by the cold and wind.

From Churchill’s latitude of 58° N, we are under the main auroral oval almost every night. Even on nights with low official activity levels, as they were on all the nights I shot these images, we still get sky-filling displays.

Here’s a selection of still images from the last week of shooting, with clear skies on all but a couple of nights. There’s still room in our March sessions!

Circumpolar Star Trails and Aurora (Feb 9, 2016) — Circumpolar star trails and aurora over the boreal forest at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, Churchill, Manitoba, on Feb 9, 2016. This is a stack of 250 frames shot over one hour (until the battery died) for a time-lapse but here stacked for a single image star trail using the Advanced Stacker Plus actions and Long Streaks effect. Each exposure was 15 seconds at f/2.8 with the 15mm lens and Canon 6D at ISO 6400.

All-Sky Aurora from Churchill (Feb 5, 2016) — An all-sky aurora display of multiple curtains of aurora borealis over the boreal forest at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, in Churchill, Manitoba, taken on Feb 5, 2016. The view is looking almost due north. Jupiter is at right. The Big Dipper is at centre frame. This is one frame from a 380-frame time-lapse sequence shot for digital dome projection in planetariums. This is a 20-second exposure at f/5 (stopped down by accident — should have been f/3.5) with the 8mm Sigma fish-eye lens and Canon 6D at ISO 3200. Temperature was -35° C. But no wind!

Observing the Aurora on Deck at CNSC — Participants in the Arctic Skies tour and course observe and photograph the Northern Lights from the upper level observing deck at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, Churchill, Manitoba on Feb 10, 2016, the first night of their tour. A Level 1 to 2 display provided a good first night show though with bitterly cold temperatures and wind chills of near -50° C. This is a single exposure of 8 seconds at f/1.4 with the 20mm Sigma Art lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 3200.

Aurora over Churchill Northern Studies Centre #1 (Feb 8, 2016) — The Northern Lights over the Churchill Northern Studies Centre on Feb 8/9, 2016 during a weak all-sky display. The arcs lay primarily in the south when the display was at its best this night. Orion and the Pleiades are just setting in the west over the town of Churchill. This is a 20 second exposure at f/2.8 with the 15mm full-frame fish-eye lens and Canon 6D at ISO 3200.

Northern Lights Panorama #2 from CNSC Deck — A panorama across the northern horizon of the sweeping curtains of the aurora, taken from the observation deck of the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, Manitoba. I shot this on Feb 10, 2016 on the first night of the Arctic Skies tour group week. Vega is low in the north at left of centre, Arcturus is the bright star at right of centre. This is a 4-segment panorama, stitched with Adobe Camera Raw, with each segment 5 seconds at f/1.4 with the 20mm Sigma lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 3200.

Aurora with Leo and Jupiter Rising (Feb 5, 2016) — Curtains of the aurora looking northeast and east toward Leo rising (at upper right) and Jupiter (at right), over the boreal forest of the Hudson Bay Lowlands near Churchill, Manitoba, on Feb 5, 2016. This is a single frame from a 680-frame time-lapse. This is a 4-second exposure at f/1.4 with the Sigma 20mm Art lens and Nikon D750 at ISO 3200.

Vertical Curtains of Aurora over the Boreal Forest — Vertical curtains of aurora converging to the zenith overhead over the snowy boreal forest at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, Churchill, Manitoba. I shot this Feb 4, 2016 on a night with temperatures of -35° C with a slight wind. The Big Dpper is at right. Exposure was 10 seconds at f/2.8 with the 15mm lens anf Canon 6D at ISO 3200.

Gazing at the Aurora from Churchill — A lone figure gazes skyward at the aurora over the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, Churchill, Manitoba. I shot this Feb 4, 2016 on a night with temperatures of -35° C with a slight wind. Exposure was 13 seconds at f/2.8 with the 15mm lens anf Canon 6D at ISO 3200.

Aurora, Big Dipper and Polaris — A wide vertical portrait of the Northern Lights in the northern sky, with the stars of the Big Dipper and Polaris above centre. Shot from the upper deck of the Churchill Northern Studies Centre on a very windy night with wind chills of -50°, so standing in the wind to take this image was bitter! You grab a few images and retreat! This is a single 15-second exposure at f/2.8 with the 15mm lens and Canon 6D at ISO 3200.

Arctic Skies Group Under the Aurora — The February Arctic Skies tour group watching and photographing the aurora from the second floor deck of the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, where it is out of the wind, which this night was producing -50° C wind chills. This is a single 6-second exposure at f/2.8 with the 15mm lens and Canon 6D at ISO 6400.

Watching the Aurora in the Winter Stars — A self-portrait of me watching the Northern Lights from the upper deck of the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, looking south to the winter stars of Orion, Gemini and Auriga. This was Feb 11, 2016, a very windy, almost blizzard night with blowing snow and reduced visibility. However the aurora did appear through the haze and clouds. In the distance are the buildings of the old Churchill Rocket Range. This is a single 15-second exposure at f/2.8 with the 15mm lens and Canon 6D at ISO 3200.

— Alan, February 12, 2016 / www.amazingsky.com

January 1, 2016January 1, 2016

New Year’s Eve Sky: Aurora, Orion, and a Comet

New Year's Eve Winter Sky

The New Year’s sky was filled with Northern Lights, a panorama of stars, and a comet at dawn.

It was a busy night for stargazing as 2015 turned to 2016. A fine display of Northern Lights kicked off the celebrations, as curtains danced in the east as Orion rose (below).

New Year's Eve Aurora, Dec. 31, 2015

Toward midnight the Lights kicked up again, now with Jupiter (on the horizon) and Leo rising in the east (below).

New Year's Eve Aurora #2 (Dec 31, 2015)

I shot hundreds of frames for time-lapse sequences, and assembled them into a short music video. Click on the buttons to enlarge it to HD.

Just before midnight, while the second time-lapse was going and the aurora was still active, but before the Last Quarter Moon rose to light the sky, I shot a set of tracked images taking in the entire winter sky from horizon to well past the zenith.

That image is at top. It takes in the winter sky and northern winter Milky Way, from Canis Major just above the horizon, up past Orion, then on up to Perseus and Cassiopeia at top right.

It shows how Orion and Sirius, the night sky’s brightest star, stand nearly due south at midnight on New Year’s Eve.

Comet Catalina near Arcturus on New Year's Day — Comet Catalina (C/2013 US10) near Arcturus in the constellation of Bootes, at pre-dawn on the morning of January 1, 2016, with the Last Quarter Moon nearby illluminating the sky. A long, faint ion tail is visible extending 2 to 3 degrees to the right while a brighter but stubby dust tail extends down to the south. Shot from home using the 200mm Canon telephoto and 1.4x extender at f/4.5 for a stack of 8 x 2-minute exposures at ISO 800 with the Canon 6D. Median combined stacked to eliminate satellite trails. The comet is slightly blurred due to its own motion in that time.

The final show of the night, now before dawn on New Year’s Day 2016, was Comet Catalina sitting right next to the bright spring star Arcturus. The comet was visible in the moonlight as a fuzzy object next to brilliant Arcturus, but the photo begins to show its faint tails, just standing out in the moonlit sky.

The comet will become more visible later this month once the waning Moon exits the dawn sky, as Catalina is expected to remain a nice binocular comet for most of the month as it heads high into northern sky.

Happy New Year to all! Have a celestial 2016!

Don’t forget, you can download my free 2016 Sky Calendar as a PDF. See my previous blog for details and the link.

November 21, 2015February 23, 2016

Astrophotography Video Tutorials – Free!

Learn the basics of shooting nightscape and time-lapse images with my three new video tutorials.

In these comprehensive and free tutorials I take you from “field to final,” to illustrate tips and techniques for shooting the sky at night.

At sites in southern Alberta I first explain how to shoot the images. Then back at the computer I step you through how to process non-destructively, using images I shot that night in the field.

Tutorial #1 – The Northern Lights

This 24-minute tutorial takes you from a shoot at a lakeside site in southern Alberta on a night with a fine aurora display, through to the steps to processing a still image and assembling a time-lapse movie.

Tutorial #2 – Moonlit Nightscapes

This 28-minute tutorial takes you from a shoot at Waterton Lakes National Park on a bright moonlit night, to the steps for processing nightscapes using Camera Raw and Photoshop, with smart filters, adjustment layers and masks.

Tutorial #3 – Star Trails

This 35-minute tutorial takes you from a shoot at summer solstice at Dinosaur Provincial Park, then through the steps for stacking star trail stills and assembling star trail time-lapse movies, using specialized programs such as StarStaX and the Advanced Stacker Plus actions for Photoshop.

As always, enlarge to full screen for the HD versions. These are also viewable at my Vimeo channel.

Or they can be viewed on my YouTube channel.

Thanks for watching!

And for much more information about shooting and processing nightscapes and time-lapse movies, check out my 400-page multimedia eBook, linked below.

October 8, 2015October 8, 2015

Dawn Sky Delight – the Real Scene

The Moon, planets and Northern lights provided a wonderful show in the dawn sky.

What a superb scene this was. On October 8 the waning crescent Moon shone near Venus (brightest) and Regulus, with red Mars and bright Jupiter paired below.

If that wasn’t enough, as the wide-angle panorama below shows, the Northern Lights were also ending a night of performance, with an arc along the horizon and pulsing waves rising up the sky to the northeast near the planet grouping.

The panorama also sweeps right, to the south, to take in the winter Milky Way and constellations of Orion and Canis Major. Click on the image to bring it up full screen.

The Moon will appear near Mars and Jupiter on the morning of October 9, and then the three planets will begin to converge for a tight gathering for a few mornings around October 25.

Be sure to wake early for the dawn sky show that continues all this month!

September 13, 2015September 13, 2015

The Dancing Lights over Dinosaur Park

The Northern Lights dance over the badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park, a World Heritage Site.

Aurora alerts called for a fine display on Friday, September 11. Forewarned, I headed to one of my favourite shooting spots at Dinosaur Provincial Park, and aimed three cameras at the sky. It didn’t take long before the lights appeared, right on cue.

The display started out with lots of promise, but did fade after 12:30 a.m., just when it was supposed to be peaking in intensity. I let the cameras run for a while but eventually stopped the shutters and packed it in…

…But not before I captured this odd bit of aurora in the east, shown below, that appeared as an isolated and stationary band pulsing up and down in brightness, but with little movement.

I’ve seen these before and have never heard a good explanation of what process creates such an effect, with a patch of sky appearing to “turn on” and off.

You can see the effect at the end of the time-lapse compilation, linked below from Vimeo.

As usual, please enlarge to full-screen and watch in HD for the best quality.

Unfortunately, a patrolling park official checking on things, spoiled some frames with her truck’s headlights. It’s one of the hazards of time-lapse imaging.

As a final image, here are all the fish-eye lens frames stacked into one image, to create a single star trail showing the sky rotating about the celestial pole.

A composite stack of 198 images creating a circumpolar star trail image of the entire sky, with the motion of the stars and the Northern Lights over an hour recorded onto one frame. The 8mm fish-eye lens take in almost all the sky, with the camera aimed northeast to the centre of the auroral arc, with Polaris, the centre of the sky’s rotation, at left. The scene is at Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, from September 11, 2015. Each exposure was 20 seconds at f/3.5 with the Sigma 8mm lens and at ISO 6400 with the Canon 6D. The ground comes from a stack of 16 images taken early in the sequence turned into a smart object and mean combined with Mean stack mode, to average out and smooth noise. The sky comes from 198 exposures, Lighten stacked using the Advanced Stacker Actions from StarCircleAcademy.com. — Each exposure was 20 seconds at f/3.5 with the Sigma 8mm lens and at ISO 6400 with the Canon 6D. The ground comes from a stack of 16 images taken early in the sequence turned into a smart object and mean combined with Mean stack mode, to average out and smooth noise. The sky comes from 198 exposures, Lighten stacked using the Advanced Stacker Actions from StarCircleAcademy.com.

It’s been a good week for auroras, with a promise of more to come perhaps, as we approach equinox, traditionally a good time for magnetic field lines to align, funnelling solar storm particles into our magnetosphere.

Keep looking up!

September 9, 2015

The Dancing Northern Lights

The lights came out and danced in my sky in the early morning hours.

The early warning signs weren’t calling for anything too impressive for a display last night, September 8/9, but the sky surprised us with a fantastic display of Northern lights.

I shot with one camera – it was very late, or very early! – but shot enough frames to create this short 1.5-minute music video.

I photographed the sequence with a single fixed-camera aimed east toward a bright auroral curtain, showing fast pulsing forms common to the later stages of a substorm. But then a new bright curtain sweeps in from the north and the display brightens even more in a new substorm. The display then fades.

The exposures were taken over an hour from 1:30 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. MDT. Each was a 2-second exposure with an interval of 2 seconds, shot with the Nikon D750 at ISO 3200 and Sigma 24mm lens at f/2, for a total of just over 850 frames.

Music is my Adi Goldstein at AGSoundtrax.com.

July 24, 2015July 24, 2015

The Milky Way over the Milk River

The summer Milky Way shines over the Milk River and the sandstone formations of Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park.

Earlier this week I spent two nights shooting at a favourite site in southern Alberta, near the U.S. border. Here, the Milk River winds through a small canyon and coulees lined with eroded sandstone formations called hoodoos. Carved on those hoodoos are ancient graffiti – petroglyphs dating back hundreds of years recording life on the plains. Thus the name: Writing-on-Stone.

It’s a beautiful place, especially so at night. I was there to shoot video scenes for an upcoming “How to Photograph the Milky Way” tutorial. And to collect images for the tutorial.

Above is a shot that is one frame from a time-lapse sequence, one that captures a meteor and the Milky Way over the Milk River, with the Sweetgrass Hills of Montana in the distance.

This image is from a set of exposures I took with the camera and ultra-wide 15mm lens tracking the turning sky, to prevent the stars from trailing in long exposures. A set of images with the tracker motor turned off supplied the sharp ground.

It shows the sweep of the summer Milky Way, with some clouds and forest fire smoke intruding to the south.

In both images the ground is green because, in part, it is being lit by an aurora display going on behind the camera to the north.

Here’s the view looking east, with a green aurora fringed with red lighting the northern sky.

The display on the night of July 22/23 formed a classic arc across the north. This was my panoramic view of the vast auroral oval that was wrapping around the planet at far northern latitudes. Here, I was at 49° north, almost on the Canada-U.S. border, and well south of the main oval.

In all, it was a magical two nights at a scenic and sacred site.

June 23, 2015

The Great Solstice Aurora: THE MOVIE!

On June 22 I shot the great all-sky aurora with three cameras all shooting time-lapse frames. Here’s the result!

The rapidly moving and astonishing patterns of the aurora are ideal for time-lapse photography. Except for a total eclipse of the Sun, nothing else in the sky changes with such dramatic and jaw-dropping intensity.

For the June 22 outbreak of Northern Lights across the sky, I shot some 2,200 frames, and assembled them into the time-lapse compilation here.

One sequence records the entire sky and the complete development of the display, from when it first appeared in twilight about 11:15 p.m., to when it faded into a diffuse glow across the sky by 1:15 a.m. I shot that sequence with an 8mm fish-eye lens, to capture a scene suitable for projection in a digital planetarium theatre.

I shot the other sequences with 15mm and 24mm lenses. All total, the 3-minute movie comes from about 50 gigabytes of images.

Still images from this night, and from the time-lapse sequences, are in my previous blog post.

I hope you enjoy the video. Do enlarge it to full screen 1080p HD.

June 23, 2015June 23, 2015

The Great Solstice Aurora of 2015

Aurora watchers were on alert! Look up after sunset on June 22 and the sky should be alive with dancing lights.

And the predictions were right.

I headed out to a nearby lake in preparation for seeing and shooting the show. And as soon as the sky got dark enough the Lights were there, despite the bright solstice twilight.

The display reached up to the zenith, as seen in my fish-eye images, like the one below. I shot with three cameras, all shooting time-lapses, with the fish-eye camera recording the scene suitable for projection in a digital planetarium.

However, it was apparent we here in western Canada were seeing the end of the display that had been going on for hours during an intense geomagnetic storm. The aurora was most intense early in the evening, with a minor outburst about 11:30 to 11:45 pm MDT.

The aurora then subsided in structure and turned into a more chaotic pulsating display, typical of the end of a sub-storm.

However, an attraction of this display was its juxtaposition over another storm, an earthly one, flashing lightning to the northwest of me.

By 1 a.m. MDT the display, while still widespread over a large area of the northern sky, had turned into a diffuse glow.

But 60 gigabytes of images later, I headed home. The time-lapse compilation will come later!

June 22, 2015June 22, 2015

Reflections of Solstice Planets and Northern Lights

The summer solstice sky was filled with twilight glows, planets, and dancing Northern Lights.

What a magical night this was. The evening started with the beautiful sight of the waxing crescent Moon lined up to the left of the star Regulus, and the planets Jupiter and Venus (the brightest of the trio), all set in the late evening twilight.

They are all reflected in the calm waters of a prairie lake.

I shot the above photo about 11 p.m., as late a twilight as we’ll get. From here on, after solstice, the Sun sets sooner and the sky darkens earlier.

Later, about 12:30 a.m., as predicted by aurora apps and alert services, a display of Northern Lights appeared on cue to the north. It was never very bright to the eye, but the camera nicely picks up the wonderful colours of a solstice aurora.

At this time of year the tall curtains reaching up into space catch the sunlight, with blue tints adding to the usual reds fringing the curtain tops, creating subtle shades of magenta and purple.

The display made for a photogenic subject reflected in the lake waters.

June 8, 2015

Aurora and the Old Farm Truck

The northern lights returned to our prairie sky in a colourful display near solstice.

Last night, Sunday, June 7, I headed out to a nearby abandoned farmyard to shoot the planets setting into the western twilight. But as the sky darkened the faint arc of an aurora appeared to the northeast, promising a fine show after midnight.

Sure enough, as the sky got dark, which doesn’t happen until very late now at 50° north in mid-June, the aurora began to dance.

The top image is a frame from the display at its best. It is one of 400 frames I shot for a time-lapse sequence.

This image is from the start of the sequence, just as the aurora was beginning to get good, with curtains of green laced with tints of magenta and purple. At this time of year the tops of the curtains often look blue, as they scatter direct sunlight streaming over the pole.

However, the colours were not visible to the unaided eye — only the camera brought out the colours, as this display never got intensely bright to the eye.

Toward the end of the sequence the display began to spread out, becoming patchy and less colourful, a typical behaviour after a substorm outburst.

More activity may be in store this week. So keep looking up! And check Spaceweather.com for alerts.

May 11, 2015May 11, 2015

The Red Aurora of May 10

A strange red arc of aurora moved slowly across the sky on May 10.

All indicators looked favourable early in the evening on May 10 for a good auroral display later that night, and sure enough we got one. But it was an unusual display.

From my site in southern Alberta, the northern sky did have a diffuse glow of “normal” green aurora that never did take much form or structure.

But overhead the aurora took the form of an arc across the sky, starting as an isolated ray in the southeast initially, then reaching up to arch across the sky with what looked to the eye like a colourless band.

But the camera showed it as a red arc, with just a fringe of green curtains appearing for a few minutes.

Be sure to click HD and enlarge the video to fill your screen.

The time-lapse movie shows the sequence, over about 90 minutes, with 170 frames playing back at 12 frames per second. You can see the red arc develop, then become more narrow, then exhibit a few green curtains. Then it fades away.

Large-scale pulses also brighten the whole sky momentarily.

The other images are individual frames taken during the evening, showing snapshots of the red arc development, as it became more narrow in structure and gained green curtain-like fringes.

Presumably the red structure was very high in the atmosphere while the green curtains attached to it that did appear hung down from the high-altitude red arc.

I shot all images with an 8mm fish-eye lens to capture most of the sky. The camera is looking north toward Polaris, with the Big Dipper almost directly overhead near the centre of the frames.

The main image at top is a star-trail stack of 80 frames showing the sky’s circumpolar motion around Polaris and the aurora blurred and blended over 45 minutes of motion. I stacked the frames with the Advanced Stacker Actions from StarCircleAcademy.com

April 16, 2015

Back Under the Northern Lights

The aurora dances behind a pioneer homestead on the Alberta prairies.

After a stay of five months in New Mexico I arrived back in Alberta earlier this week, and was greeted tonight, April 15, with a display of Northern Lights. They’ve been very active in the last month, but I’ve seen nothing of them from where I was in New Mexico.

But here in southern Alberta, I just walk out onto my back deck and there they are! An email alert prompted me to have a look, after predictions earlier in the day called for little activity tonight. But indicators picked up nicely late in the evening.

I headed to an abandoned pioneer homestead near my acreage. A photogenic foreground always adds to the scene.

A little further down the road is a prairie pond, ruffled a little by wind tonight, blurring the reflection I was hoping to capture.

It’s nice to be back under the Northern Lights. Bring them on!

March 6, 2015March 6, 2015

Dance of the Northern Lights

My new 3-minute music video compiles still and time-lapse imagery of the aurora I shot in February 2015 from Churchill, Manitoba.

Churchill’s location at 58° North on the shore of Hudson Bay puts it directly under the main auroral oval, the zone of greatest auroral activity. Over the 9 nights, 2 were cloudy, with a roaring blizzard.

But on the 8 clear nights we saw aurora every night. I shot time-lapses on 6 of those nights, shooting about 3,500 frames, most of which appear in the final cut of this movie.

Despite the amazing displays we saw, on no night was the auroral activity index (on a scale of 0 to 9) higher than 2 or 3. These were all “normal” quiet nights for auroras in Churchill. Anyone farther south would have seen little in their sky on most of these nights.

I shot many of the time-lapses with an 8mm spherical fish-eye lens, to create sequences suitable for projection in digital planetarium domes. One other time-lapse sequence (the last in this movie) I shot with a 15mm full-frame fish-eye. Even it is not wide enough to take in the entire display when the Lights fill the sky.

Exposures were typically 10 to 15 seconds at f/3.5 and ISO 1600 to 4000, all with the Canon 6D. I powered it from its lone internal battery. Amazingly, despite temperatures that were considered extreme even for Churchill (often -32° C at night) the batteries lasted 90 to 150 minutes allowing me to take lots of frames with no battery change or perhaps just one battery change. Churchill is very dry and only on one night did I have an issue with the lens frosting up.

Music is by Dan Phillipson, his composition “Into the Unknown,” purchased for royalty-free use through Triple Scoop Music. I edited the movie in Apple Aperture, with a title sequence created in Photoshop. Processing of the original images was with Adobe Camera Raw, Photoshop, and LRTimelapse, with assembly of movie frames done with Sequence for MacOS.

I hope you enjoy it! Do click on the Enlarge button to watch it full screen. It may take a while to start playing.

February 22, 2015February 22, 2015

Green Waves of Northern Lights

Last night the sky exploded with waves of green and pink as the Northern Lights danced in the bitter cold.

With blizzard conditions forecast for the next two days, last night might have been our last for viewing the aurora from Churchill. But if so, we ended on a high note.

The aurora appeared on schedule again at about 9 to 9:30 p.m., following my evening lecture, as it has done every clear night for the last couple of weeks. It began as a sweeping arc to the north, as above, then moved south to encompass the entire sky.

About 11 p.m. the sky burst open with waves of green arcs, but with generous tints of red and magenta that the camera picks up easily. To the eye, the reds are barely visible unless the aurora gets very bright.

Despite the bitterly cold temperatures of -34° C with a -50° wind chill, everyone in the tour group braved the night to take in the sight. And many managed to work their cameras and tripods, no small feat under such conditions, to get great shots.

The groups this week and last saw aurora every clear night, with clear nights on at least 3 out of the 5 nights of each course. Not a bad take, fulfilling everyone’s “bucket list” dream of standing under the aurora borealis.

February 21, 2015

A Cold Night of Auroral Lights

It was a bitterly cold night for watching the dancing Northern Lights.

When Environment Canada issues Extreme Cold warnings for Churchill, you know its cold! With temperatures at -32° C and with high winds last night, the wind chill equivalent was -50° C.

But that didn’t stop us from watching the Lights!

I nicely finished my evening lecture at 9 pm when the Lights appeared on cue. They were faint at first, but then brightened nicely by 10 pm. The show was over by midnight, a well-timed and convenient display.

The 22 participants in this week’s course all bundled up and headed out, onto the second floor viewing deck and out onto the ground for views and photos of the aurora.

This was not a brilliant display – the official activity level was still reading only 1 or 2 on scale of 0 to 9. But it provided us with some beautiful curtains and lovely colours. The hazy appearance is from high clouds and local blowing snow.

The views from the Deck overlooking the boreal forest make for some nice photo opportunities, from a spot largely out of the constant westerly winds.

We have three more nights here, though snow is forecast for the last two. Tonight may be our last night to enjoy the Northern Lights. But all are happy with what they have seen and shot so far.

February 19, 2015February 19, 2015

The Colourful Curtains of the Northern Lights

All-Sky Aurora #1 (Feb 17, 2015)

The Northern Lights have performed beautifully the last few nights, presenting curtains of light dancing across the sky.

Two nights ago in Churchill, Manitoba we were treated to a “storm level” show of aurora, with the Lights all across the sky in green curtains waving and curling before our eyes.

The curtains tower several hundred kilometres up into the atmosphere, from the lower edge at about 80 km up (still high above the stratosphere) to the curtain tops at about 400 km altitude at the edge of space.

The camera picks up the colours far better than the eye can, recording not only the predominant green hues but also shades of pink, magenta and red.

The magentas and reds come from the sections of the curtains at the highest altitudes, from the top of the auroral curtains. Here, where the atmosphere is a near vacuum, sparse oxygen atoms can glow with a red emission line.

However, there must be a blue component as well, leading to the magenta or pink tones, as in my photos here. Nitrogen can glow in blues and purples and might be contributing to the colours.

The top two photos are from Tuesday night, Feb 17, when storm levels of 5 were in effect worldwide.

All-Sky Auroral Curtains #2 (Feb 18, 2015)

Lower down, at about 100 km altitude, the air is denser and oxygen glows with a brighter green hue, which the eye can detect more easily.

The photo above from last night, with an activity level of just 2, also shows most of the sky covered with a faint emission, with a patchy appearance, with dark “holes” also moving and flowing in the time-lapse movies I shot.

Closer to the horizon, and far to the north, the aurora brightens into the more characteristic green snaking curtains.

This image from three nights ago shows an usually coloured aurora at the start of the night, glowing mostly a deeper red and orange.

The green was still off in the distance far to the east. It arrived a few minutes later as green curtains swept in over us.

But the initial red was from low-energy electrons lighting up just high-altitude oxygen. Only when the higher energy particles arrived did the sky light up green.

I shot all these images with an 8mm fish-eye lens as frames in time-lapse sequences intended for use projected in digital planetarium domes, where the 360° “all-sky” scene would be recreated on the dome as it was in real life.

If you are with a planetarium, contact me if you’d like to get aurora clips.

Our second group of aurora tourists has arrived today at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, and the weather is warming to a high of -20° C. Balmy!

We’re hoping for more fine displays, though the space weather forecast calls for a quiet magnetic field in the next few days.

February 17, 2015February 17, 2015

The Blizzard Aurora

Beautiful curtains of light draped across the sky despite the blizzard blowing below.

Last night, February 16, was the last night for aurora viewing for the first aurora tour group hosted by the Churchill Northern Studies Centre.

Despite predictions calling for an active display, we had given up hope of seeing anything, as a blizzard had been raging all day and into the evening. But about 10 pm I knocked on doors down the hall — get up! The Lights are out!

Against all odds, skies cleared enough to reveal a wonderful all-sky display of Northern Lights, with multiple curtains of light snaking over the sky.

The view above overlooks the now derelict launch buildings of the abandoned Churchill Rocket Range, in use from the late 1950s until the 1980s. Some 3500 rockets were fired from here in its heyday, shot into the active auroras that occur here almost nightly under the auroral oval.

This view overlooks the boreal forest on the frozen shore of Hudson Bay, and shows the multiple curtains that twisted and turned across the sky.

Tonight’s display was marked by fringes of magenta, rather than the deeper reds we observed 2 nights ago.

Winds were howling and snow was blowing, but from the shelter of the Centre’s second floor observing deck we could view the display in windless comfort, despite the -30° C temperatures.

The group was delighted at having this bonus viewing night. Now the concern is whether the blizzard will abate enough to allow flights in and out of Churchill Airport. The group might get another night under the Lights!

February 15, 2015

Standing Under the Auroral Oval (2015)

The Northern Lights dance overhead each night from Churchill, Manitoba.

If you really want to see the Northern Lights, don’t wait for them to come to you. Instead, you go to them.

For the second year in a row I’ve been able to participate as an instructor during week-long aurora courses and tours at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre on the shore of Hudson Bay. The site is at 58° latitude, far enough north to place us directly under the main auroral oval, the prime location for viewing the Northern Lights.

If it’s clear, a view of dancing arcs and curtains of aurora is almost guaranteed. Two nights ago we had a marvellous display, despite official indicators of aurora strength and geomagnetic activity all reading low or even zero.

Still, the Lights came out and danced across the sky.

The top photo is selfie of me standing the display in a 360° all-sky image shot for use in a planetarium. The research centre building is at left. The view is generally looking north.

This view is from the second floor deck of the centre, usually a bit more sheltered from the wind. It allows a good view to the north and east, where displays typically start, as they did this night. Feb. 13.

As the display developed the curtain rose up into the sky to arc from east to west across heavens.

This image, also a 360° fish-eye image taken with an 8mm lens, shows the display at its best, with rippling curtains hanging overhead. It’s part of a time-lapse sequence.

The next night, February 14, was marked by fainter but an unusually red aurora, appropriate for Valentine’s Day perhaps. Or the 50th anniversary of our red and white Canadian flag.

The sky was a little hazier, but the aurora shone through, initially only with a red and orange tint, colours we could just see with the unaided eye – the long exposures of the camera really bring out the colours the eye can only just perceive when the aurora is dim.

The green curtains, seen here in the distance, did arrive a few minutes later, lighting up the curtains in the more usual green colour, with just upper fringes of red.

It seems the red is from low-energy electrons exciting oxygen only in the upper atmosphere. Only later did the more energetic electrons arrive to excite the green oxygen transition that occurs at lower altitudes.

With luck, I’ll have more nights to stand under the auroral oval and look up in wonder at the Northern Lights.

September 27, 2014

Aurora and Airglow Panorama

The sky lights up in greens and reds from aurora and airglow.

This has been a good week for aurora watching. Friday night the Northern Lights danced again, this time in a sky already filled with a more subtle phenomenon, airglow.

Airglow adds its own bands of reds and greens across the sky, seen here as arcs from left (west) to centre (north) and into the east. Airglow is light from fluorescing air molecules releasing energy absorbed from the Sun by day.

The aurora adds the brighter green curtains across the north with vertical beams of yellow and red shooting up.

A weird structure which I assume is from the aurora is the sharp-edged yellow band at left in the west. It lasted no more than 2 or 3 minutes, enough to record in three frames of this 7-segment 180° panorama taken near home at an array of grain bins, now filled from the harvest.

To the west and east urban light pollution adds glows of yellow to the horizon.

August 28, 2014

The Northern Lights at the Old Larson Ranch

The northern lights dance, and light the pioneer homes at the old Larson Ranch in Grasslands National Park.

What a night this was! I arrived at the Larson Ranch site in the Frenchman River valley to shoot some Milky Way panoramas, when, right on cue, the aurora broke loose.

Some aurora had been there since nightfall as a diffuse arc, but about 11 p.m. local time (Central Standard Time in Saskatchewan) the curtains began to dance and pulse with activity as a sub-storm hit, raining solar particles onto our atmosphere from down the magnetic tail of the Earth.

The aurora glow lit the old pioneer buildings of the Larson Ranch, one of the stops on the scenic backroad drive through the Park.

The Larsons ran their ranch by the Frenchman, or Whitemud River, from the 1920s until 1985 when they sold their ranch to the National Park system, forming the first land for the new Grasslands National Park.

The house at left is the original home of cowboy author Will James, who lived here for a time working on ranches in the valley before moving to the United States. He was from Quebec, where he was Ernest Dufault.

I shot this 360° panorama using a 15mm lens, shooting 8 segments at 45° spacings, each a 1-minute exposure at ISO 2500 and f/3.2 with the Canon 6D. I used PTGui software to stitch the segments into a equi-rectangular projection pan.

August 27, 2014

Milky Way & Aurora Panorama from Grasslands National Park

The Milky Way and the Northern Lights arch across the sky in the Frenchman River valley of Grasslands National Park.

This 360° panorama takes in two arches of light:

• The Milky Way rising out of the northeast at left and stretching across the sky overhead at top and down into the southwest at right of centre.

• And the Northern Lights, as an arc of green and red across the northern horizon. They got brighter and higher later this night, August 26/27, as my previous post shows.

Bands of green airglow also stretch across the sky from east to west.

I shot this last night from the Frenchman River coulee, a wide valley cut at the end of the Ice Age by glacial run off, and occupied today by the meandering Frenchman River. It winds through the heart of Grasslands National Park and makes its way to the Missouri River to drain into the Gulf of Mexico, one of only a handful of rivers in Canada to do so.

The river and wide pasture land made this a choice place for a ranch. For decades this was home to the 76 Ranch, one of the largest in Canada. At right is its old wood corral, in front of the Milky Way and its “Dark Horse” structure in the dark lanes of the Milky Way. Appropriate I thought.

The only lights visible are from spotlights from researches conducting studies of the nocturnal black-footed ferret. Otherwise, the site was as dark as you’ll find it in southern Canada.

I assembled this panorama using PTGui software, from 8 segments shot with a 14mm lens in portrait orientation, all untracked 80-second exposures at ISO 4000 and f/2.8.

August 27, 2014

Aurora over Grasslands Park

The Northern Lights dance over the prairie landscape of Grasslands National Park.

The aurora warnings were out for last night but I hadn’t expected to see much. But about 10:30 pm a faint arc appeared to the northeast. The display brightened about local midnight (Central Standard Time here in Saskatchewan) and became fairly active for a time.

The main arc increased in intensity and moved with fine structure and detail. The eye could see some faint, colourless curtains extending upward but the camera picks them up as red, typical of auroral curtains reaching into the top of the atmosphere.

I shot these from the Frenchman River valley, a wide coulee formed by glacial rivers and now the heart of the West Block of Grasslands National Park.

It was a beautifully dark site except for flashes of spotlights now and then (not seen in the photos here) from naturalists doing census studies of the nocturnal and endangered black-footed ferret recently re-introduced to the Park. Ironically, their lights spoiled the otherwise pristine and pitch-black night in this dark sky preserve.

June 8, 2014June 9, 2014

Aurora Over the Old Barn

What a fabulous night this was! Forewarned about an impending solar storm I headed to the site of a rustic barn near home to shoot the Northern Lights.

The night started with cloud but upon looking out after midnight (it pays never to go to bed too early!) the skies were clear. Checking Spaceweather.com showed an active auroral oval lit up red and Storm in Progress warnings!

That was all the cue I needed to pack up the gear and head over to the old barn site where I have been shooting time-lapses all this week.

The aurora remained quiet and diffuse for the first hour and a half, but then about 2 a.m., the substorm hit. Within seconds the curtains began to light up with well-defined rays and beams shooting to the zenith. And they danced.

The notable feature of this display, as with one in May 2013, was the blue and purple colour of the tops of the curtains. I think this is partly due to sunlight illuminating the tops of the curtains, possible at this time of year when the upper atmosphere is perpetually lit by the midnight Sun.

From the start I shot with two cameras taking time-lapses (the main still image at top is a frame from one of the movies). Then toward the end of the night I switched to just shooting still images framed to suit the curtains towering up to the zenith.

As above, I also shot a “selfie” of me shooting the vertical image in the middle of the set.

But below is the result of a night of shooting time-lapse movies and stills, in a montage set to music. The link takes you to my Vimeo site. Do turn on HD mode.

I hope you enjoy the video!

May 24, 2014

Hunting the Elusive Camelopardalids

The Milky Way, an odd aurora, and the glow of urban light pollution lit the sky. But alas, no meteors!

On Friday afternoon, May 23 I headed 3 hours east of home toward the clearest skies in the province. The quest was for sightings of the Camelopardalid meteors, the new and much publicized meteor shower from Comet LINEAR, 209/P that had been predicted for tonight.

I had very good skies for the first couple of hours of darkness, from a viewpoint looking north over the prairies on the high rim of the Cypress Hills, Alberta. Clouds did move in about 12:30 a.m., about the time the shower was to be peaking. But up to that point I had sighted just a handful of meteors and many were likely random ones, as they didn’t seem to be streaking out of the radiant point. A few other people who had converged at the site saw other meteors to the south that might have been shower members.

Perhaps the peak came later under cover of clouds. But up to 12:30 a.m. I saw little sign of an active shower. Still, it was worth taking the chance to chase into clear skies in hopes of bagging a herd of Camelopardalids.

I shot hundreds of frames with two cameras and none picked up a Cam meteor – lots of satellites, like the streak at lower centre. And for a few minutes this strange white auroral curtain appeared, slowly drifting from east to west across the northern sky, like a searchlight, above the magenta horizon glow of low-level aurora. To the northwest glowed the lights of Medicine Hat, illuminating the clouds toxic yellow in a classic demonstration of light pollution.

February 10, 2014February 10, 2014

Boreal Aurora

The northern lights – the aurora borealis – shine above the trees of the northern forest – the boreal forest.

This was the scene on Sunday night, February 9, 2014, as the aurora intensified for a few minutes making for a photogenic backdrop to the snow-covered pine trees of the boreal forest.

The landscape looks like daylight but is actually being lit by the light of the bright waxing Moon in the south. These scenes are looking north.

I shot these images as part of my stay at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre where I have been presenting enrichment lectures to two groups of tourists here to see the northern lights during week-long stays. Both groups have been successful in seeing the lights on at least one to two nights of their stay, with the displays usually appearing as sky-spanning arcs overhead.

Here I took the time to take a “selfie” under the northern lights, as the curtains began to wave early in the evening.

In all, it has been a fantastic experience, to witness the lights from a site right under the active auroral oval at 58° north.

February 8, 2014February 9, 2014

Waves of Northern Lights in Time-Lapse

Watch waves of aurora wash over the sky rising out of the west to swirl overhead.

This was the spectacle we saw Friday night at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, as the northern lights filled our sky. I set up my camera on the east side of the main building, out of the bitterly cold west wind. The fish-eye lens is aimed west but its view takes in most of the sky.

The bright object at lower left is the Moon.

The still image above is a frame from the 349-frame time-lapse movie below.

Each frame is a 7-second exposure at f/3.5 and ISO 1250. The interval is 1 second.

The movie covers about 45 minutes of time, compressed into 30 seconds. It shows the aurora peaking in intensity, then fading out behind the ever-present thin cloud drifting through all night.

What amazes me are the waves and loops of auroral curtains that come at us from the west (bottom behind the building) then swirl around the zenith overhead. They move off to the east and north at the top of the frame.

Even watching this in real-time the scene was astonishing. The curtains rippled so quickly, forming and reforming over the sky, you didn’t know where to look. As the image above shows, people just stood amazed.

P.S.: You can view a better-grade version of the movie at my Flickr site.

February 4, 2014

Awestruck Under the Aurora

Aurora - Feb 3-4, 2014 (Fisheye #2)

The sky simply does not get any more amazing than this, as the Northern Lights dance across the heavens.

On the last night for our first aurora tour group of the season, the sky performed perfectly. Clouds cleared to reveal a star-filled winter sky, and after the evening talks and farewell drinks, the aurora began to appear. First it was a bright arc across the north, prompting me to try some self-portraits, as below.

But at about 2 a.m. a diffuse arc across the zenith exploded into activity, with rapidly waving and weaving curtains.

Everyone was awestruck. Some cheered and hollered. Others just watched in stunned silence. Some were busy with cameras. Others just enjoyed the view of a lifetime.

It was a cold night, but the aurora kept performing in waves, dimming for a time – allowing us to retreat to the warm cafeteria for hot chocolate. Then the display would brighten again to the west and a new wave of intensity would sweep across the sky to the east.

You didn’t know quite where to look to take it all in. The sight was overwhelming. Here the curtains ripple through Orion, Taurus and Auriga, all setting into the west.

The Churchill Northern Studies Centre has a new building opened in 2011 that is ideally set up for aurora watching. The building can go dark, and is located far enough from Churchill that local light pollution is not an issue. On the roof is a plexiglas dome where several people can view the Northern Lights and the entire sky in shirtsleeve comfort. The image is good enough for wide-angle photography. Sheer luxury!

But there’s nothing like being outside on a cold Arctic night, looking up and seeing this sight – thin curtains of light twisting and turning more quickly than you can take in and comprehend. It is one of nature’s greatest shows. And what a fantastic place to see it.

February 3, 2014

Aurora Shining Through the Clouds

Tonight the aurora shone so brightly for a time it was visible through the cloud.

Here at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre we’ve been battling clouds all week. But on several nights the clouds have cleared for 30 minutes or more, enough to give us glimpses of the aurora and stars. Tonight, February 2/3, the clouds never did clear away enough for a great view. This was as good as it got, with the Northern Lights shining through haze and cloud but nevertheless filling the sky.

Remarkably, this was on a night when the usual indicators of auroral activity were registering all quiet. This shows the benefit of traveling north to stand right under the auroral oval, the zone of maximum activity. In this case I’m at 58° North, in Churchill, Manitoba. Even on a quiet night the Churchill sky can be filled with curtains of dancing colours.

February 2, 2014

Underneath the Northern Lights

Our tour group to see the Northern Lights finally saw what they traveled north to experience – the aurora borealis dancing across the sky.

This week and next I’m helping to lead some tour groups who have come to Churchill, Manitoba to see the aurora. We’ve been here 3 nights so far but last night was the first with clearing skies and when the Northern Lights appeared above us.

Our home base is the beautiful Churchill Northern Studies Centre, far enough from the main townsite to give us dark skies. Being able to sleep, eat and take in lectures (or for me, give lectures) right where we can see the aurora is a tremendous luxury and convenience. The Centre is perfectly set up for aurora viewing, with a rooftop dome, and the ability to “go dark” with all lights off.

Here in Churchill, on the shores of Hudson Bay, we are at a latitude of 58° north. But critically, we are right under the usual position of the auroral oval, the main band of Northern Lights that circles the world at high latitudes.

As such, even though last night the various aurora and magnetic field indicators were registering a quiet display with little disturbance in the field, we still saw a beautiful display. It wasn’t very active but did display curtains and rays shooting up to the zenith.

As seen here, for much of the time the main band of aurora was actually in the south. That’s Jupiter glowing through the aurora and thin clouds at upper right.

We’ve been fighting clouds all week but last night skies cleared for long enough and it seemed at just the right time to coincide with the brightest outburst of this display. After I took these images, the aurora died down to a more diffuse glow then the clouds thickened in again. By then it was 3 am and we all retired to our rooms.

December 29, 2013December 30, 2013

Time-Lapse – Alberta Skies 2013

It was a good year for time-lapse photography at home. Here’s my compilation of Alberta time-lapses in a 3-minute music video.

For a year-end look back at 2013 I assembled these highlights of my year of shooting time-lapse movies of the Alberta sky, by day and night.

I’ve included clips shot around home in rural southern Alberta, and further afield at popular photo spots around the province such as Waterton Lakes National Park, Banff, Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, and Cypress Hills Provincial Park.

I hope you enjoy it! Be sure to maximize the video screen and select HD. Or for a better grade version check out my Vimeo channel.

________________________________________________

Some technical background:

I shot all the frames for the movies (150 to 300 frames for each clip) with either a Canon 5D MkII or a Canon 60Da camera, equipped with various lenses from 8mm to 200mm. For many of the clips the cameras were on motion control devices: the Radian azimuth panning unit, an Orion TeleTrack mount, or a Dynamic Perception Stage Zero dolly unit. You see the latter in action behind the credits.

For image processing and movie assembly I used Adobe Camera Raw, Photoshop, LRTimeLapse, Sequence, Panolapse/RawBlend utility, and for some of the star trails either StarStax or Star Circle Academy’s Advanced Stacker Actions.

I demonstrate all these in my Nightscapes workshops. The next one is in Edmonton, January 25!

To edit the movie I used the new OS10 Mavericks iMovie.

December 8, 2013December 10, 2013

Skyglows Galore in the New Mexico Dawn

A mix of sky glows fills the pre-dawn sky in New Mexico.

To the eye the sky looked dark, marred only by some high haze drifting through. But the camera reveals a sky filled with an amazing wealth of colourful glows.

I took this 360° panorama in the pre-dawn hours (4:45 a.m.) this morning (December 8) from the Painted Pony Resort in southwest New Mexico. It reveals a swath of green airglow to the north, the zodiacal light, and the Milky Way. At northern latitudes there was bright aurora visible last night. We might have seen some sign of it here in New Mexico in the form of increased airglow activity.

The panorama takes in, from left to right:
• Arcturus, shining like an ornament on the treetop
• the zodiacal light rising up from the east
• red Mars embedded in the zodiacal light below Leo
• the Milky Way from Puppis and Canis Major at left arching up and across the sky down into Perseus at right
• Sirius the brightest star
• Orion setting over the main house
• Jupiter, the bright object at top centre in Gemini
• Aldebaran and the Pleiades setting right of the main house in Taurus
• Polaris over the smaller house at right
• the Big Dipper at upper right pointing down to Polaris
• a green glow along the northern horizon above the smaller house that is likely intense airglow.
• green and red bands throughout the sky are airglow, caused by atmospheric molecules flourescing at night
• bands of high cloud also permeate the sky adding natural glows around the stars.

I stitched this panorama using PTGui software, from 6 segments, all tracked, taken with the 14mm Rokinon lens at f/2.8 for 2.5 minutes each and with the Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1600.

As a postscript — this is blog post #401 from me.

July 15, 2013

Road to the Northern Lights

A country road winds off into the dancing Northern Lights.

The sky put on another fine show last night, the fourth in a row with some level of aurora activity. This was the scene Sunday night as a display blossomed for a while, dancing at the end of the back road through the Cypress Hills on the Alberta-Saskatchewan border.

I had one camera shooting north and devoted to the Northern Lights, while, as you can see below, I had two other cameras on rigs to shoot time-lapse movies looking south.

This was the scene at the overlook to the Battle Creek valley, with the Moon setting and me getting the time-lapse gear going, to shoot the Milky Way moving over the hills. One camera was on a mount to pan across the landscape following the stars. The other camera was on a motion control dolly to travel down a track over the 3 hours of the shoot. I spent a lot of time in the car listening to BBC Desert Island Discs and The Life Scientific podcasts last night — the thrill of time-lapse shooting!

This is one frame from one of the movies. Streaks of green and red airglow tint the sky around the Milky Way. Amazingly, the scene is lit only by starlight and by the aurora. You could never have done this with film. It’s the sensitivity of digital cameras that makes such scenes possible, though it takes some clever processing (such as Shadow Detail recovery in Raw, Shadows and Highlights, & masked Adjustment Layers) to balance Earth and sky in the final image.

July 14, 2013

The Grand Sweep of the Auroral Oval

The Northern Lights sweep across the northern horizon in a classic arc of green and magenta curtains.

The aurora on the night of July 13/14 never got very bright but the sweep of the auroral oval still made for an interesting panoramic image.

I shot this at about 2 a.m. local time, from the high plains of southwest Saskatchewan, right on the Alberta-Saskatchewan border, on the rolling hills of the historic Reesor Ranch. The only man-made light visible is a glow on the horizon just left of the auroral arc, from the city of Medicine Hat, Alberta.

The panorama takes in about 180° of sky, framing the sweep of the auroral oval across the northern horizon from northeast to northwest. In fact, you can see the gravel road I was on at far left and far right. The main band of green from glowing oxygen is topped by curtains of magenta, from oxygen and nitrogen atoms.

If you could see this display from space you would see it as an oval of light across the top half of North America. From my perspective on Earth, I could see just a portion of the complete oval, as an arc across the northern sky.

To create this image I shot 6 segments at 30° spacings, each a 30-second exposure with a 24mm lens at f/2.8 on a Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1600. I used Photoshop to stitch the segments. It blended them seamlessly.

July 11, 2013

The Purple Curtains of Northern Lights

Curtains of purple and pink top the usual green bands of aurora.

The last couple of nights have been very clear and filled with aurora. Two nights ago, July 9, the sky really let loose for a good display showing a great range of colours. Only the green was readily visible to the naked eye, but the cameras picked up the fainter bands of purple and magenta.

Most of the colours here come from oxygen atoms glowing. But high up, in the near vacuum of space, oxygen can glow red. The curtains can also be lit by sunlight coming over the pole, lending a blue tint to the aurora. The two colours blend to give purple.

Lower down in the atmosphere, green lines from oxygen predominate. When an aurora is very energetic, the incoming electrons can trigger nitrogen lower in the atmosphere to glow red and pink, giving the curtains a red fringe on the lower edge. That didn’t happen this night.

This fish-eye shot of the entire sky shows the high purple curtains arching up the sky. Over several minutes they separated and ascended away from the main green band, shooting up the sky. It seemed as if they were their own curtains and not just a different coloration fringing the main display.

The Northern Lights have been active lately so keep an eye on Spaceweather.com and AuroraWatch for alerts and warnings.

July 1, 2013

Aurora over a Prairie Lake

A brief display of Northern Lights shines over a prairie lake.

Last night I went out to a nearby lake (there aren’t many in southern Alberta!) to shoot the twilight over water, and hoping to catch some aurora or noctilucent clouds as well.

There was lots of twilight but very little sign of aurora or NLCs. But at about 1 am the aurora kicked up briefly, enough to make a good photo but certainly nothing to get excited about for its visual appearance. It was just visible.

However, it was a fine evening of shooting at a quiet prairie lake. Crawling Lake is one of several reservoirs in the area that are part of the extensive irrigation system in southern Alberta. Despite the recent floods, this area is usually dry and drought-sticken.

This shot, which I took early in the evening, shows the lone star of Capella, shining in the twilight of a solstice summer sky. From my latitude of 51° N, Capella, normally considered a winter star, is circumpolar. It never sets and so can be seen skimming along the northern horizon on short summer nights.

An ultra-wide view shows the perpetual twilight of summer to the north, with the circumpolar stars of summer above. A campfire from some late-arriving campers is on the shore at right.

Happy Canada Day!

June 29, 2013

Night of the Northern Lights

The Northern Lights danced all night, as Earth was buffeted by winds from the Sun.

As soon as I saw the warning notices at Spaceweather.com I was hoping we would be in for a wonderful night of aurora watching. I wasn’t disappointed.

Forewarned, I headed out to the Wintering Hills Wind Farm near my home in southern Alberta. I thought it would be neat to get shots of the effects of the solar wind from beneath and beside the wind turbines of the farm. The shot above is from a time-lapse movie taken with a fish-eye lens that will look great when projected in a full-dome digital planetarium.

I shot with three cameras, with two aimed east to where the brightest part of the auroral arc usually sits. It was also exactly where the Moon would rise after midnight. This shot, above, captures the scene right at moonrise, which was also right when the aurora kicked into high gear as a sub-storm of solar particles rained down on our upper atmosphere. The ground lit up green with the glow of oxygen in the mesosphere, some 100 kilometres up.

This shot, taken moments later with a longer focal length lens, grabs the waning Moon shining behind the distant wind machines, and beneath the arc of auroral curtains.

In all, I shot 50 gigabytes of raw images, both still images and frames for time-lapse movies. I’ve assembled most of them into a musical collage that honours the night. In the final sequence of the movie, it almost looks like the wind machine is facing into the brunt of the solar wind, as pulses of aurora surge from out of the east toward the turbine towering overhead.

The music is by a new favourite artist of mine, the Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi. His latest album of alt-classical/new age music is called “In a Time Lapse.” How could you not like that?! Buy it on iTunes. It’s stunning.

I hope you got to see the Night of the Northern Lights in person. If not, I trust these images and movies give you a sense of the wonder of what the solar wind can do.

June 10, 2013June 10, 2013

Northern Lights & Noctilucent Clouds

Colourful sky phenomena combine to provide a remarkable sky show.

What a night this was! On Sunday, June 9 the aurora kicked off with a burst in the bright twilight but really got going as the sky got dark, shooting beams of magenta and blue up from the main green arc.

Then on cue, streamers of noctilucent clouds appeared low in the north, shining with their characteristic electric blue. These are odd clouds at the edge of space lit by sunlight streaming over the Pole.

Both these apparitions of the upper atmosphere glowed above a horizon rimmed with the orange of perpetual twilight set in a deep blue background sky.

Yes, the camera has brought out the colours more intensely than the eye saw, but nevertheless it was a remarkable evening close to solstice. This is a magical time of year when all kinds of sky glows light the night.

This night the European Einstein ATV cargo craft also flew over, twice, each time about 10 minutes ahead of the even brighter Space Station that it is chasing for a docking later this week.

More images to come from this night, including time-lapses of the Lights and Clouds.

May 26, 2013May 26, 2013

Aurora at the Observatory

A low aurora appears in the city skyglow and bright moonlight at the local observatory.

After several days of rain, skies cleared beautifully for a Saturday night star party for the public at the local university observatory, the Rothney Astrophysical Observatory, southwest of Calgary.

The evening was capped off by the appearance, as expected, of an auroral arc to the north. Despite the light from the nearly Full Moon and urban sky glow to the north, the aurora managed to compete and put on a show for a few minutes before fading.

About 100 people attended the evening, and were treated to views of Saturn, shining in the south near Spica. Unfortunately, clouds to the west over the mountains never cleared away enough to allow us views, and me photos, of the triple-planet conjunction of Mercury, Venus and Jupiter. Still, a good time was had by all.

May 20, 2013

Aurora All-Night

The Northern Lights dance through the night, ending with a finale burst of blue.

Here’s the time-lapse movie, below, that I shot Friday, May 17, beginning at 11:30 pm and ending 4 hours later at 3:30 am. The sky was bright with moonlight when I started the sequence, with the aurora especially active over half the sky. The display settled down to form a slowly pulsing green band behind the old barn, which went into silhouette after the Moon set.

Then, just as the sky was brightening with the first glow of dawn, the aurora kicked up its heels again and danced across the north, shooting beams of blue across the sky.

I ended the sequence as dawn was fading in … and I was fading out! Still, it was a wonderful night to be out under the stars.

The movie compresses 4 hours of aurora shooting into 40 seconds of aurora playback!

I assembled the time-lapse movie from 1200 frames, each 11-second exposures at 1 second intervals, with the Canon 60Da at ISO 1600 and 10-22mm lens at f/4.

May 19, 2013May 19, 2013

Old Barn By Aurora Light

As the Northern Lights dance they light up an old barn on a moonlit night.

The still frame above is from the movie down below, a 3-hour-long time-lapse taken on May 17, the night of the big aurora display. I shot this with a camera riding along on a motorized dolly track, to provide the panning motion to the scene.

You can see the rig in this image just below, which I took with another camera framing the entire scene.

Aurora over Old Barn #1 (May 17-18, 2013)

Using the second camera, I was intending to take shots showing a motion-control time-lapse sequence being taken, for illustration in talks and publications.

The aurora quickly forced me to change plans with camera #2. But I let the main motion-control camera continue down its track for the rest of the night, resulting in the movie below. At one point in the movie I briefly appear at right, as I moved the second camera to the south side of the barn to look north to the main area of the display.

In the movie, the stars of Virgo and the planet Saturn rise into a sky lit blue by moonlight early in the evening. As the Moon sets, the shadows rise and engulf the barn.

While catching stars rising behind the rustic old building was the original intention of the shot, the Northern Lights added a bonus. Not only do they dance in the sky behind the barn, but the north face of the old grey barn, in shadow from the moonlight, lights up green from the glow of aurora shining in the north.

Very nice. It certainly made for a colourful scene under the skies of southern Alberta.

May 18, 2013

Night of the Northern Lights – #2

You know you are in for a good night when the aurora appears even before the sky gets dark.

I shot this in the evening twilight, as the curtains of Northern Lights began their dance in the dusk. Light from the quarter Moon also illuminates the scene. It was a mad rush to get the camera set and aimed to begin shooting. I was also looking after another camera that was shooting a dolly-shot time-lapse of the barn.

For this image I used the Canon 60Da and Canon 10-22mm lens at the widest setting. Even that was not enough to take in the whole of the display that was covering the sky.

May 18, 2013May 18, 2013

Night of the Northern Lights – #1

What a night this was, with a display of Northern Lights dancing across the sky as soon as it got dark. They danced all night.

I set up May 17 at my neighbourhood rustic farmstead for a night of time-lapse shooting of the old barn in the moonlight, but knowing an aurora was likely. My iPad app beeped and alerted me to that possibility only an hour or so before sunset, letting me know a storm was underway. And sure enough, as soon as it got dark, there were the curtains of green dancing all over the blue twilight sky. This frame is from 1200 I shot in a dusk to dawn time-lapse movie. It is from early in evening, with a pink glow of twilight still fringing the northwest horizon.

What marked this display was the blue and purple curtains, with those colours only really apparent in the camera images. I think those tints come from sunlight hitting the auroral curtains high in the atmosphere where the Sun is still shining. At this time of year the high atmosphere never gets dark and is always lit by sunlight streaming over the pole.

More images to come!

May 8, 2013

Milky Way and the Northern Lights

The Milky Way appears from behind the colourful curtains of the Northern Lights.

This was the scene last Saturday night, into the pre-dawn hours of Sunday morning, May 5, as the summer Milky Way rose in the east while a display of aurora played across the northern sky. The Northern Lights weren’t particularly bright this night, but the long 2-minute exposure I used to bring out the Milly Way recorded the aurora with colours and an intensity only the camera could see this night.

The green is from oxygen glowing in the lower part of the atmosphere, though still some 80 km up, where only rockets and high-altitude balloons can fly. The tops of the auroral curtains are tinged with the pinks from another type of oxygen emission possible only at the very top of our atmosphere, where molecules are few and far between and what’s left of the air that surrounds us meets the vacuum of space some 150 km up.

From Earth it’s hard to visualize just what we are seeing when we look at display like this. But check out some of the Aurora videos at NASA’s Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. You’ll see time-lapse videos taken from the Space Station as it flies by and through the same types of aurorae with green lower bands and pink upper fringes, beautifully captured floating high above the Earth in vertical curtains reaching up into the blackness of space.

March 30, 2013March 30, 2013

The Easter Aurora

Here’s a celestial gift for the Easter season – a display of northern lights on Good Friday.

It wasn’t a particularly clear night but in this case the clouds added to the photos. In one direction I was shooting the Northern Lights to the northeast, while to the west at the other end of the yard I was shooting the winter sky setting, plus having a quick look at Comet PANSTARRS. It was certainly a sky filled with attractions.

Happy Easter to all and I hope spring is finally arriving where you live – assuming you are a northerner!

October 2, 2012

Aurora Highway

Traffic seems to drive off into the Northern Lights, on a highway to heaven.

On the way home Sunday night the aurora exploded again in a burst of brilliance. I pulled over by the side of the road and grabbed some shots. I’m looking north here, with the Big Dipper also in the frame. For this shot I layered in two exposures for the ground to get a more complete sweep of the taillights. But the sky is from a single frame.

This was the widely-seen aurora of September 30, 2012. This scene of mad motion down the highway contrasts with the quiet solitude of the badlands landscape of the previous post.

October 1, 2012October 1, 2012

Northern Lights Dancing Over the Badlands

It was a marvellous night – a triple act: with a fabulous sunset, a beautiful moonrise, then as the sky got dark the aurora came out and danced.

Sunday night I headed out to Dinosaur Provincial Park near Brooks, Alberta, site of the world’s best late-Cretaceous fossil finds, and a striking landscape of eroded badlands. I was just finishing taking frames for a sunset-to-twilight time-lapse movie when the aurora kicked up in activity, quite bright at first, despite the light from the nearly Full Moon, which is illuminating the landscape. I swung the camera around, loaded in a new memory card and begun shooting another time-lapse sequence of the dancing northern lights in the moonlight.

While the display faded to the eye over the next hour, the camera still nicely picked up the subtle colours, like the magenta hues. I shot 330 frames, each 8 seconds long at ISO 800 and f/2.8 with a 16-35mm lens and Canon 5D MkII camera.They’ll make a great movie sequence.

It was a 40-gigabyte night, as the second camera was shooting the moonrise over the badlands. But then I pressed it into service as well shooting the aurora. It was a great night to be at a location as wonderful as Dinosaur Park.

September 4, 2012

The Sky on Fire with Northern Lights

At last … a good display of northern lights towering up the sky.

The evening of Tuesday, September 4 provided the best aurora display I’ve seen in recent years. It was fairly bright and reached up to the zenith and beyond into the south. Colours were green, with just a hint of high-altitude red visible to the naked eye. The camera picks up the colours of an aurora better than the eye can see.

I shot this aurora from my rural backyard. The display came up quite quickly over 10 to 15 minutes starting about 11 p.m., and, as usual, started as an arc across the northeast then rose higher to cover all the northern sky up to the zenith, as shown in this horizon-to-zenith image. The light from the waning gibbous Moon just off camera to the right illuminated the foreground. The show was short-lived. By 12:30 a.m. the auroral curtains had faded into obscurity.

– Alan, September 4, 2012

August 6, 2011August 11, 2011

Auroral All-Sky Dance

Here is nearly two hours of auroral dancing compressed into 25 seconds.

This was the “all-sky” aurora of August 5/6, 2011, widely seen over North America but perhaps (from early reports) best from the western half, especially Canada, favoured for Northern Lights due to our latitude.

I shot this with the 8mm fish-eye lens and the Canon 5D MkII. The movie consists of 255 frames, each 24 to 30 seconds in exposure duration, taken one second apart. ISO speed was 1600 and aperture f/3.5. The playback frame rate is 10 fps.

This display was quite chaotic, without the graceful rippling curtains present in many displays, but rather huge patches of sky turning off and on. This is typical of an aurora in the declining part of the storm — it had already been raging for several hours by the time it got dark here in Alberta.

Nor was the display very bright, so the longer exposures needed to record it well further blur any fine motion. Nevertheless, you get a good idea of the intense activity this aurora displayed. The magnetosphere was jumping last night!

August 6, 2011

Auroras At Last!

It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen a display of Northern Lights as good as this one. But with the Sun picking up in activity from a record lull in the last few years, great all-sky displays like this might become more frequent.

The last time I saw aurora cover most of the sky like it did last night (August 5) was back in the days of shooting film. So this was the first chance I had to shoot an all-sky aurora with digital cameras. This is with the Canon 7D and the ultra-wide 10-22mm zoom. I also shot with the fish-eye 8mm, and an “all-sky” movie of those frames will be in the next posting.

This display was widely seen and predicted, as solar monitoring satellites had observed major flares on the Sun earlier in the week and tracked the resulting “coronal mass ejections” across the solar system. We knew they were aimed at Earth and would hit August 5. In this case, the resulting geomagnetic storm raged for long enough that people across a wide swath of longitudes from Europe to North America were able to see the display during their local night, August 5/6. Even people in the northern U.S. had a good look.

While the display was certainly active and extensive it never did get really bright. So this one still falls short of the “10 out 10” scale for spectacle. Nevertheless, as digital cameras can do so well, the images picked up the greens from glowing oxygen with remarkable intensity. More interesting are the purples, seen toward the beginning of the night but then they faded away. The purple tints come from the tops of the towering curtains of aurora which often glow red from nitrogen molecules at very high altitudes being charged up and excited. But the tops of the curtains can also be lit by sunlight. The blue from the sunlight and the red from the aurora itself mix to produce a purple tint. Only the camera picked this up.