Aurora time lapse

It's not great quality, but here's a short time-lapse I made last night when the aurora was out. It was a nice little show, not fantastic, but nice. It was kind of cool because it was partly cloudy and the clouds were moving too. This view is from our driveway.

Ode to Aurora

Yesterday was exciting because NPR did an equinox post on their picture show and used some of my aurora photos. Here's a link to the post:
NPR: Auroras on Autumnal Equinox

The title is a little misleading since two of the three photos were from the August 29th storm and one was from earlier this month, not really on the equinox. It's a fun post anyway. Here's a bunch more photos I've taken in Fairbanks:

Also, this video from the International Space Station has been making its way around the internet, but if you haven't seen it yet you need to. If you have seen it, you should probably watch it again.

Time-lapse courtesy of NASA.

This gorgeous view of the aurora was taken from the International Space Station as it crossed over the southern Indian Ocean on September 17, 2011. The time-laps made from still images spans the time period from 12:22 to 12:45 PM ET.

While aurora are often seen near the poles, this aurora appeared at lower latitudes due to a geomagnetic storm – the insertion of energy into Earth's magnetic environment called the magnetosphere – caused by a coronal mass ejection from the sun that erupted on September 14. The storm was a moderate one, rated with what's called a KP index of 6 on a scale that goes from 0 to 9, caused by just a glancing blow from the CME. As particles from the incoming CME moved into the magnetosphere they traveled around to the back side -- or night side, since it is on the opposite side from the sun -- of Earth and then funneled down onto Earth's poles and even lower. As the particles bombarded oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere, the atoms released a photon of light that we see as the beautiful colors of the aurora.

Credit: NASA

Thanks for sharing!

A great day and night

Fairbanks has been having absolutely perfect weather the last few days: 65 and sunny. On Sunday a few clouds scattered the sky, it was totally gorgeous and the air felt awesome.

Kate and I went for a walk in Creamer's Field. The cranes are still flying around practicing their oh-so-awkward landings. Also, there is a dead moose carcass there, although now it is mostly bones.
Three sandhill cranes land awkwardly at Creamer's Field. For such pretty birds they lack a little grace on the landings.

Moose carcass; not decayed enough to not stink yet.

When night finally came (it actually is getting dark again) the sky became perfectly clear and you'll never guess what happened next -



We saw the aurora again! It was a stupidly ridiculous display too. Imagine, I had to sit outside on a beautifully clear night watching and taking pictures of this for an hour:









Of course there's more:

Have I Gone Mad?

1. . . 2 . . . 3 . . . Run, don't slip, wait it's behind me now, just sit still it will come back in a minute! Ahhh, what do I do? It's everywhere at once!



Tonight, under the twilight, the cobalt sky lit up with green highlights as the aurora exploded overhead. It all started a little before midnight, then I was out until 2am shooting the sky. Within minutes the bands were showing fantastic pinks and reds!



And all of this came before midnight! A little after 12 am the sky became mostly dark (although in a couple weeks that cobalt will be as dark as it gets). Of course, this means that this might be the last great show we really get until September.

Once darkness set in the display really began. I don't know where to start; I took 75 pictures that I am going to keep, so after today I'll probably just post a few a week to keep me occupied during the non-aurora summer. Oh, well we did get some strong 'moon dogs' for a while. That was cool and pretty unique:


The interplay between the aurora, clouds and moon was really cool, and since the aurora was also super bright it could really compete with all the other lights in the sky. It's motion was so fast I increased the ISO setting to a little over 1000 for many of the pictures and took 2 sec. exposures to grab some of the texture. This makes the images a little grainier, but still good.

I have to say that as much as I am ready for the snow to melt, I'm really going to miss seeing the northern lights over the next couple of months. I can't describe how cool it is to see them so bright and fantastic; not to mention directly overhead. It was hard to crank the tripod back far enough last night.

In total, I was outside for about 2 hours just watching and taking pictures. It was truly a wonderful, wonderful time.



I've decided to dedicate a whole set on flickr just to tonight since there are so many images. I hope you enjoy these few for now. Thanks for visiting!

The Brightest I've seen yet

Tuesday night, or actually early Wednesday morning I walked out to see bands streaking across the entire sky. The bands ran the usual east to west, but there were so many they covered the entire sky from north to south, even drowning out the normal Fairbanks city light to the south. It was incredible!

By the time I got the camera it was already starting to fade, but still managed to grab a few shots while it was super bright:

Our car reflects the strong Aurora early in the morning. Really cool show.

I took this as the bands were retreating to the north and dimming. You can still see some of the brightest bands in the bottom left through the trees. Then, just like that, as mysteriously as they appeared, they were gone

Lots and Lots of Aurora All Over the Place

It's been a good couple of nights, and last night left me breathless.



Classes and work are in full force again so I don't have a lot of time to make new posts. I'll soon make a link to new photos so browsing can be easier and there aren't tons of posts and re-posts on here and facebook. For now here click here for latest photos.

Late Night

I went to pick up Jason from the airport last night/this morning. His flight was delayed and I didn't drop him off until about 2am. When I left his place and got to the end of his road I saw this:

Holy Moly!

They were so freaking cool, bright, colorful, and everywhere! For about 10 minutes, then they were completely gone. I'm very happy to have stepped outside at the right moment. I ran back in to grab the camera and Kate. See, its a good thing we have an outhouse or I would have missed them completely. There were lots of reds and oranges, although I could never seem to get the camera in the right spot at the right time and they were moving way to fast. I've posted a few more on flickr, and I'll probably post a few more today or over the weekend.

There's a good chance the aurora will be out in force again tonight, so I'll be out (probably at Murphy Dome) or exploring some new vantage points. So hopefully I'll get some more tonight.

Night

It's been so long since we've had a good auroral display that now I'm getting antsy. Supposedly a solar windstream from a coronal hole was going to hit us yesterday, then today, now the 7th. But, it's supposed to snow this week! *Hands thrown up into air*. It's hard to see the aurora when it's snowing and cloudy.

It's clear tonight though, so the obvious solution is to drag Kate out to Murphy Dome and trudge out in knee (waist) deep snow to try to take some pictures. Well, the northern lights were out (they almost always are there). It was pretty dim, but still fun to watch.

Here are some of the pictures (click to view them in flickr):



Orion hovering over the radar tower. You have to turn around to see the northern lights.



There they are.



Here they are doing that little flicker/shimmer thing that is so cool



And here they are again, posing with the big dipper.

I saw four moose today!

Finally a Few Aurora Photos from Murphy Dome

I took a drive out to Murphy Dome earlier tonight to take some pictures. As I get through cleaning up some of them I will post a lot on flickr. It was a little eerie walking around in the dark by myself on top of the dome. By eerie I mean I'm surprised I wasn't trampled by a moose. Here are a few of my favorites.

Aurora Tonight!

And it was a great show. It lasted about one hour, but was only really bright, and I mean REALLY bright for about 10 or 15 minutes. I've seen the whole sky lit up pretty bright a few times, but for about two minutes tonight we had the strongest ribbon I have seen yet. Kate finally had the chance to see it too, since it wasn't two in the morning. Here are a couple of the better shots I got tonight. (It was so bright I shot with an iso 100 and used a little longer shutter speed.) Hopefully more will come soon.



Click to go to flickr page