Since I arrived in Alberta I have been waiting for the opportunity to photograph the Aurora Borealis. I have been wanting to try and photograph them for years, but we are still a few years from solar max, so the night sky has been pretty quiet.
I had signed up for auroral activity email alerts to let me know when they may be visible and it paid off. Friday night at about 11:00 PM I checked my email and saw the possibility of aurora so I checked some space weather sites (Canadian Space Weather www.spaceweather.gc.ca/forecastmap_e.php and www.spaceweather.com) and saw that the sky show was on!
(the auroral activity ring that night)
I quickly packed up my tripod, camera, some warm clothes and headed off to a friends farm. I knew he was a poor shot so I would be safe walking around behind his house. I spent a couple hours out getting pictures from different locations. That time of night it is very quiet except for the distant howling of the coyotes.
Usually I was taking 30 second exposures and the camera would do a noise reduction for another 30 seconds. So I had a lot of very quiet minutes to just watch and contemplate God's beautiful creation and thank him for the opportunity to witness it.
After awhile the auroral display started to calm down to just a dim green glow so I packed it in and was home around 2:30 AM. Late night, but definitely worth staying out.
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This reminded me of a time years ago when a co-worker of mine wanted me to inform her any time I saw the Northern Lights. One night I saw them so I headed out to some fields to watch the display. I called her up on the old style bag cell phone that I had in the car. It was a rather unreliable phone, but I was able to call her and let her know that the Northern Lights were visible. She had to stay home that night with the kids so she wasn't able to go out and see them. Jocelyn asked me to describe what I was seeing for her. I informed her that the aurora had calmed down a bit and was now just a green glow. After chatting for a bit I said "Oh wait, here come some features!" meaning that there was some interesting features and movement appearing in the sky. Unfortunately, the phone died.
More unfortunately, Jocelyn thought I had said "Oh wait, here come some creatures!" -- and then the line went dead. She had visions of something killing and eating me out on the marsh. She felt much better when I showed up alive and well the next day at work
If you would like to see more of that nights activity, go to my Northern Lights photography page.
Labels: astronomy, Photography
See? There are advantages to living in the frigid prairies. :) Check my blog for some new photos of cherry blossoms. I didn't try to take good photos, just a couple of snapshits... just for you.
I only saw the nothern lights once in Edmonton. It was pretty cool.