Tag Archives: Aurora Borealis

Aurora Borealis

The Auroral STORM

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Ahoy! You might be thinking to yourself “yet another Aurora post”, and I wouldn’t blame you, because I’ve been putting up a lot of them lately! However, this one has a new piece to offer, I hope you’ll check it out!

Last nights Aurora was a true “storm”. The kP (measure of Auroral Activity) was at 5 and there was no chance I was going to miss it! I took myself and my gear to Murphy Dome. This time I snowshoed in a little ways to get away from all the light possible. However, by 11:30 the aurora was yet to show itself! Rather than be disappointed I headed back to the truck and grabbed my sleeping bag. I wasn’t going anywhere.  While waiting for the Aurora I did capture this shot: It’s a 3 minute exposure to deomonstrate the start movement… and also how many of them there are! The skies were completely dark last night due to our new moon. A perfect night for starscapes and the Aurora.

3 minute exposure of the hills north of Murphy Dome. Milky way and a LOT of stars!
3 minute exposure of the hills north of Murphy Dome. Milky way and a LOT of stars!

At about midnight I was still laying out waiting for the Aurora. I was pretty comfortable which makes the eyes heavy. When I woke up at 2 it was finally starting! I caught the beginning of the Aurora which had plenty of reds in it (visible to the naked eye) and was dancing across the sky.

Waiting for the Aurora I spend a lot of time curled up in my sleeping bag. In fact, I got in my bag at 11:30 PM and did not get out until 4:30 the next morning. When I wasnt wathching the Aurora I caught some Zzzz's!
Waiting for the Aurora I spend a lot of time curled up in my sleeping bag. In fact, I got in my bag at 11:30 PM and did not get out until 4:30 the next morning. When I wasnt wathching the Aurora I caught some Zzzz’s!
The reds of the Aurora
The reds of the Aurora

The aurora continued to build, but it was not like an Aurora I have seen yet. There was SO MUCH activity that the whole northern sky became filled with green. Small pieces of bright aurora would pop out of the green fog and dance before disappearing. If I were to face north and stick may arms out straight at my sides, everything in front of my body was green. The whole sky was saturated. These saturated greens do not flicker and dance, but shift like a pale haze.  The video will show you easily the transition from the structured Aurora to the green storm. It reminds me of a movie’s cut scene while looking into a magic ball.

I also think that I got lucky enough to get some blues in the timelapse video, however, that could be wishful thinking. If you think you see them let me know, so I know I’m not just seeing what I want to see! 🙂 . They certainly were not visible to the naked eye… so that only half counts on my Aurora ‘bucket list’ anyway – blues are definitely on the bucket list!

This video has been slowed down considerably from other videos based on the feedback everyone gave. Thanks!

The night ended with me still sitting in the same spot as I had slept. My snowshoes still planted in the snow and the Aurora was still overhead, but you have to call it quits at sometime… right?. What a night!

This photo was taken at the very end of my stay at 4:30 AM. The last pieces of the storm still drifted in the sky.
This photo was taken at the very end of my stay at 4:30 AM. The last pieces of the storm still drifted in the sky.
Aurora Borealis, In Alaska

Aurora Borealis : Science!

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Ahoy Readers!

Well, last night was a stunner here in Alaska. I went out for the Aurora, and was yet again bowled over by just how wonderful it is/was! First things first, I need to toot my horn a bit here. Aurora Tech (http://goo.gl/9x4yk1) insulating technology worked like a charm. Coupled with a Zippo handwarmer and another hand-heater my camera operated for over 2.5 hours at -20 degrees Farenheight on one battery! That’s a tremendous improvement! I was able to shoot 2 different angles for over an hour each, results in a pretty great timelapse and some great photography. That’s at the bottom!

Aurora tech in action! My lunch bag insulator worked perfectly last night. After 2.5 hours my camera was still snapping shots with no stop on one batter! I added a Zippo heater pack and one other hand warmer to the box to help my camera out.
Aurora tech in action! My lunch bag insulator worked perfectly last night. After 2.5 hours my camera was still snapping shots with no stop on one batter! I added a Zippo heater pack and one other hand warmer to the box to help my camera out.

I thought I would do some research for myself on the Aurora and the science behind it. All information that I disseminate here can be found on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(astronomy)) – sorry for you non-wiki-trusters. But for this instance I think it will be OK 🙂

THE BIG QUESTIONS

What causes the Aurora?

Auroras are a emissions from photons (light) which are in the Earth’s Atmosphere above 80 km (50 mile). They are excited when they collide with solar wind and the magnetospheric particles which are ‘funneled’ and sped up by the Earth’s magnetic lines.

Aurora terms:

Aurorae are classified as diffuse and discrete.

  • “The diffuse aurora is a featureless glow in the sky that may not be visible to the naked eye, even on a dark night. It defines the extent of the auroral zone.”
  • “The discrete aurorae are sharply defined features within the diffuse aurora that vary in brightness from just barely visible to the naked eye, to bright enough to read a newspaper by at night. Discrete aurorae are usually seen in only the night sky, because they are not as bright as the sunlit sky.”

Where do the colors come from?

  • RED : At high latitudes Reds come from excited oxygen.
  • GREEN : at lower altitudes reds are suppressed and green shines out. Green can be generated by the collision of oxygen and nitrogen.
  • YELLOW and PINK : Just mixes of red and green!
  • BLUE : At the lowest altitudes there is no more atomic oxygen and there is lots of nitrogen. It radiates at blue and red – which can give you purple!

What does the Aurora sound like?

Apparently there are records of people ‘hearing’ the aurora! Scientists actually were able to record a sound, which they describe as ‘clapping’ from the aurora. I’m not sure I agree with their analogy of the sound, but have a listen!

Source: http://www.space.com/16498-northern-lights-clapping-sound-explained.html

What colors are the most common?

Apparent ranking of colors is this :

Green –> Pink –> Pure Red –> Yellow –> Blue

I have never seen blue!!

Images from last night:

Northern Lights over Tanana River, Fairbanks, AK 02/07 - 02/08/14
Northern Lights over Tanana River, Fairbanks, AK 02/07 – 02/08/14
Northern Lights over Tanana River, Fairbanks, AK 02/07 - 02/08/14
Northern Lights over Tanana River, Fairbanks, AK 02/07 – 02/08/14
Northern Lights over Tanana River, Fairbanks, AK 02/07 - 02/08/14
Northern Lights over Tanana River, Fairbanks, AK 02/07 – 02/08/14
Northern Lights over Tanana River, Fairbanks, AK 02/07 - 02/08/14
Northern Lights over Tanana River, Fairbanks, AK 02/07 – 02/08/14

Slower, or faster?

I have a question for you, the readers. I have created 2 timelapse videos below of the same aurora from last night. One is played slower than the other. Which do you prefer? I would love to know for future timelapse video making!

 

Aurora Borealis, In Alaska, Life

School, Hat-trick on Burbot, Level 4 Aurora : A Great Day to Be in Alaska

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Ahoy Readers! It is 3:47 AM in AK, and I have been sitting out all night enjoying a level 4 Aurora. That is how my day ended, but it began with class until 11 and then burbot fishing from 12- 1:30 – followed by burbot cleaning, because I got three today! The largest was a true ‘trophy’ of the burbot world and was 31 inches long. Tonight the burbot turned into a stirfry with onions, carrots, green pepper and tomato. Quite tasty!

Three burbot day! The largest is 31 inches, and the smallest... quite small! Unfortunately there is no catch and release when fishing overnight lines.
Three burbot day! The largest is 31 inches, and the smallest… quite small! Unfortunately there is no catch and release when fishing overnight lines.
A bruiser burbot! 31 inches!
A bruiser burbot! 31 inches!

After dinner I was looking forward to a night of the Aurora. I was sorely disappointed when unexpected clouds began to roll in at 3:00 PM. I need to have a discussion with the weatherman around here because they consistently blow the cloud cover forecast. However, by about 10 the clouds were cleared off to the north, which gave me hope to see the aurora. I headed to Murphy Dome, my favorite borealis perch, and when I got there it had already started! The aurora tonight was had an added twist of some cloud cover. I was a bit disappointed by that at first, but soon realized it had its benefits! A green ‘lightening’ storm was happening over head. The thin clouds were lit up much like the clouds of a thunderstorm. The effect was really quite stunning. I think that the timelapse video below captures that!

But, what is a timelapse? I use it a lot, and thought I would give a quick tutorial for those unacquainted! It is one of my favorite techniques to shoot, because it allows me to be hands-off with the camera and enjoy whats around me. The camera does a majority of the work! To understand a timelapse you have to first understand a movie. Movies are traditionally shot at about 24fps (I believe that’s correct, but let me know if I am not). That means every second 24 frames are shot and displayed. A timelapse, rather than shoot in ‘real time’ (ie: 24 fps), takes shots over an extended period of time and then combines them together at 24 fps. So, for example : tonight I was shooting 20 second exposures (22mm, f/2.8, 800 ISO) and taking one shot every 25 seconds. A little bit of simple math of 24 (frames)x25(seconds between each shot) gives us 600 seconds for every second of compiled video. In essence, that means for every second of video you are seeing 10 minutes of ‘real life’. That makes time pass pretty quickly!

I had a new, added benefit tonight. I am shooting my new Tokina 11-16. This is the first time I have mounted it to my OmD Em5, and wanted to give a little review for any Micro Four Thirds users. The lens shoots almost perfectly on the MFT system. One thing I noticed was some distortion on the edges. Definitely keep your shots in the center of the lens. This contradicts what I read about the lens being clean from edge to edge. Even adapted this lense shoots very fast and is a markable step up from my 12-50 EZ kit lens which I have traditionally used due to its viewing area. And, on the topic of viewing area, I didn’t seem to lose any of the 108 degree specified by the manufacture. I am shooting a Nikon Tokina, and was a bit worried I would lose some of the width due to adapting it up, but that didn’t happen. The only beef I have with the adapter is that it didn’t open the aperture all the way to 2.8. Rather, I had to wedge a piece of cardboard into the aperture expander to keep it open. I can adjust my aperature setting digitally with the MFT system, so it doesn’t really bother me that much. I basically want to shoot it wide open anyway. Overall though, I couldn’t be more happy with the lens for this Aurora shooting!

So, without further ado here is the Aurora from tonight. There is a good Aurora forecast coming up. If you are in Alaska, keep you eyes to the sky. I know I will be!

In Alaska, Life

In Pursuit of the Aurora : A Personal Best

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Ahoy Readers!

Tonight left me speechless, and if you had seen the explosive, pulsating reds and greens across the sky, you may have been too. DISCLAIMER : Poeticism, superlatives, and lists of glamorous, stunning, beautiful adjectives will abound in this post, for this was no mere night and cannot be described with just plain words :P. If this grammatical superfulism is not your style,  I would not blame you for skipping straight to the images on this one.

The aurora tonight was viewed about  5 miles from Murphy Dome. It started out as small pinnacles of colorless light in the sky which reminded me of shafts of lights streaming through a window into a dusty room — the cosmos is indeed full of dusty rooms. At first I thought the northern lights were just lights from the town. But it was not so. The lights began to grow brighter and quickly showed their emerald sheen.  They grew into blended columns of dark green, light green, lime-green, and moss green light that filled the northern sky. The green gave way to red, but by give-way I don’t mean they were replaced entirely. Rather. the towers of green pierced through the red back drop that saturated the sky to the north-northwest. The reds acted very differently than the greens, and seemed to never pick a form. They chose to just be the canvas for the greens to dance upon. And dance they did. Flowing curtains of green morphed and changed so rapidly that remembering what it used to look like only tore your attention away from concentrating on its new shape. Because the band of Lights split the cosmos going 180 degrees from horizon to horizon, the direction that you craned your head was important to your viewing experience. I would recommend the UP -Crane because the UP-Crane allows you to view the nucleus of the aurora. Above your head, on nights such as this was one, the core of the Aurora reaches into the depths of space. The pillars which serve to block the sky in banded patterns to your left and right seem to stretch out and lengthen as you stare directly up at them. Like balancing a pencil on  your nose by its eraser and then focusing on its sharpened tip. This portal of time feels like it would lead you to another dimension if you could jump just high enough to each it. The nucleus of the aurora is often the fastest changing. It grows and contracts while sending out electric pulses which pop, undulate, and meander across this sky. The beauty of the Aurora in its complete randomness.

Getting away from some of the poetry, I’d like to talk about my next upgrade in Aurora photography. First it was know-how, second it was cold-beating insulation (still in development) and now one of the next steps in my Aurora photography is a wide angle lens. However, I’m not that versed in lenses (especially old ones) and I would love to hear opinions on wide angle lenses for Micro-four Thirds. I’m looking for anything that would give me wider than 18mm ( in 35mm equivalent) and have considered old c-mount lenses (Cosmicar 8.5mm f/1.5) as well as MFT such as the panasonic 7-14 mm f/4.0. Leave a comment if you have any thoughts!

Without further ado, here’s some pictures from the night. The images start with the low-level reds which were soon exploding across the sky. Sorry for the intrusive Watermarks on these images, but I’m being a bit more protective of these captures compared to some others. Remember, if you ever want an image, be sure to contact me!

PC070014
The start of the reds overhead with my companions outside of Murphy Dome. This was just the start of something incredible!
The watermelon aurora.
The watermelon aurora.
The watermelon aurora.
The watermelon aurora.
The mixing of the reds and the greens was fascinating and differed from the distinctly separated watermelon aurora
The mixing of the reds and the greens was fascinating and differed from the distinctly separated watermelon aurora
The mixing of the reds and the greens was fascinating and differed from the distinctly separated watermelon aurora
The mixing of the reds and the greens was fascinating and differed from the distinctly separated watermelon aurora
Do you see the angel in this Aurora?
Do you see the angel in this Aurora?