How powerful were the Aurora last night? Well, let’s get a little perspective. Despite the fact that it doesn’t take long for me to get to dark skies, I live in a city that is a mix of Bortle Class 5 and 6 skies. What does this mean? John Bortle created the “Bortle Scale” to measure how much light pollution exists in the night sky. The amount varies, obviously, depended on where you life – City or Rural. Here is a graphic that nicely summarizes varying levels of light pollution from handprint.com.
Squinting at the graph, you can see that Bortle 6 is bright suburban skies. So… Not the greatest place to either observe or image the night sky.
As you can imagine, you’d think that these type of skies would be doom for an aurora event. On a typical night, you would be right. Last night… It was a different story. I always had this idea that a strong aurora would make a striking image over downtown Eau Claire at what is called the Confluence. Did it work? Only one way to find out. Below is the image I captured with some heavy editing.
Now, I obviously edited the image to highlight the aurora, but the point is that I was able to capture enough of the aurora’s light to pull out the colors. This image is a stitch of 5 images, 8 seconds of exposure for each image, ISO320 and I stopped the lens aperture down to f/3.2.
So, how strong was the aurora last night? Was it another Carrington Event? SpaceWeatherLive.Com forecast for last night’s event stated the solar storm was a “G2” that occurred on August 8th. Okay… What does G2 mean? Similar to light pollution, here is graphic from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that explains the strength of solar storms along with the potential damage they can create.
So, as you can see, we had a moderate storm that created last night’s light show – No Carrington Event. Yet, it’s amazing how even a moderate solar storm can create such strong Northern Lights.
Now, you may be wondering – Did Fr. James consult all of this information before taking his picture? Well, no, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have an awareness of what was happening. I was having a hard time sleeping last night (this morning) and went outside to see what the sky was doing. When I could see Northern Lights over my house, I went from frustration and excitement. I grabbed my camera and away I went. Sometimes it’s best to depend on what your eye sees in the night sky, jump in and figure out the details later.
That being said, would I suggest you do the same when the next solar storm occurs that can create Northern Lights? Should you just “jump in” and start shooting? Yes and No. If you’ve never imaged the Northern Lights before, it would be good to learn some basics. USAToday has a nice brief article on how to take Northern Lights images with your cellphone. A little knowledge is a good thing. The nice thing about Northern Lights is that the basics of imaging are rather simple. The rest depends on what the sky above you decides to do for the night. So, learn a little and then get out there the next time there’s a Northern Light’s forecast!
In other words, as important as a little knowledge is to image Northern Lights, don’t fall into the trap of getting too “gear minded” or “forecast minded.” The key is to go out and enjoy the night sky! And if you missed last night’s lights, don’t worry! We’re in a “solar maximum” period meaning the Sun’s cycle of solar storms should be peaking over the next couple years. We should have many more opportunities to witness these beautiful ribbons of light!
Here’s a more extensive video on how to take images of the Northern Lights from Simon d’Entremont. He’s an excellent online teacher of both astro and wildlife photography based in Canada. Enjoy!
