It’s finals week here at UAF and that means no sleep because you’re studying… or, because the aurora is out! Last night I simultaneously watched the aurora “oval” (i.e. the prediction of aurora visibility as provided by NOAA Space Weather) on my screen and studied for my evolution exam on Tuesday. When the aurora perked up overhead at 10:30 PM I abandoned my books, and headed outdoors. For the sake of my education, I decided to stay close to home last night and shoot over the UAF Sustainable Village so that I wouldn’t stay out too late. It was a stunning night to be out!
I am continuing to improve on my timelapsing technique. Last night these images were shot at 1sec with no buffer for card write in the middle. In the past I have left 2 seconds for card write. Often in those two seconds the aurora changes so much that a small gap has been created. You’ll notice without that gap, that the Aurora is silky smooth! Although this isn’t real-time, at 1 second intervals it’s getting pretty close! The 1 second exposure captured the vertical banding of the high aurora well.
Here is the timelapse from the night:
And, here’s the imagery.
The Green flame morphs a little bit over the Sustainable Village. A beautiful night out!A Facebook Follower described this as a ‘green flame’ to me this morning. I think that’s a pretty apt description!
In all of these images I have desaturated the foreground to remove light pollution. I think the effect is pretty nifty!
Ice fog and hoar frost greeted me as I stepped into the inky-darkness on December 1st at 7AM. I was snowshoeing up the Pinnell Mountain Trail in search of caribou. Specifically I was hoping to harvest an individual from the “Forty Mile Herd“, because the hunt opened on December 1st, and would be closed by December 2nd due to a high amount of animals near the road. The goal of the hunt was to harvest 283 animals, and it was projected that hunters would achieve that in one day. In short, it was expected to be a zoo of hunters steaming around on their snow machines. I wanted to skip the crowds and headed north over the snowfields where most people head south. Robert Frost would declare I took the one less traveled.
The sun finally broke over the horizon in 10:15, and I glassed over the shrubs again in the drainage that I sat high above. The sled that I drug made an excellent seat; I was anticipating filling it with caribou! However, 60 minutes of glassing used up 20% of my available daylight, and I decided to move to the next basin. After looking into the nooks and crannies of the next valley, it seemed the drain had been pulled in this basin, if there had ever been caribou there they had emptied out! By the end of the day I had traveled over 7 miles over mountains, and through the snow, but no caribou to be found.
However, on a beautiful day like this one, there is always a silver lining. Each mountain side was filled with hoar frost encrusted spruces and the day finished with a great moonrise/sunset combination. So, rather than pictures of a trophy, I bring the pictures I shot of the Alaska Winter Wonderland!
By the way, let me know which shot of the moon with trees you like the best, I would love to hear!
As the sun rose the clouds went pink and orange overhead. I was in the shadow of the mountain, and wouldn’t see the sun for a few more hours until I reached the other side!This lone spruce is toughing out an existence on along the ridgetop. Sure is beautiful!The sun sets along the Pinnell Mountain trail. A great way to end a beautiful day!One more look at the hoar frost as a rounds a large clump of spruces encased in hoar frost.A beautiful moon splits some spruce trees in the alpine tundra of Twelvemile SummitUnfortunately computer screens are too small to do a panorama justice. However, here the moon rises and the sunsets. Pretty cool to capture it all in one image!Up in the alpine tundra of the Pinnell Mountain trail, the moon sits high over all.Christmas came early to the Pinnell Mountain Trail – star on top of the tree!
This last week has been really amazing in regards to the weather in Fairbanks, Alaska. While my Minnesota family and friends hunted whitetails in 20 degree weather, we enjoyed temperatures nearing 30 degrees all week. To boot, it was sunny, you betcha! The Geophysical Institute forecasted high aurora activity starting on Friday night the 14th and extending all the way through Monday! With the warm weather, and aurora forecast it was just a matter of deciding where to go!
Panav, Logan and I arrived at the gates of Denali National Park at 9:30 PM. The winter regulations only allowed us to drive in 3 miles, and from there we packed our gear another 1.5. We located a place where the black spruces were shorter, and the mountains stood tall around us. The heart of Denali Park was absolutely dark, and as far as I know we were the only ones in the park that night! Meteors from the Leonid meteor shower flashed overhead leaving their long trails and thrilling the watchers on earth. This shower peaks on 11/17/2014 – so be sure to check it out if you have some clear skies tonight! Over the mountains, the aurora was already building as our three shutters started popping, and we did not have to wait long for the lights to explode around us. Energy of the northern lights always seems to originate from on horizon, and on this night the jagged horizon in front of us swelled with an intense green light that erupted overhead throwing pinks and greens in racing lines overhead.
The building aurora over Denali had a real treat in store for us! It was almost a year ago that I posted about my first “incredible” (I use quotations because they’re all pretty amazing) aurora, and I tried to explain the corona of the aurora. Officially, it is defined as “a circle of light made by the apparent convergence of the streamers of the aurora borealis” (MW Dictionary). My analogy was to think of single beam of the corona as a pencil, which you balance on your nose and then concentrate on the eraser; the corona is made of hundreds of green, red, and pink ‘pencils’! It is fast moving and pulses with energy. I am happy to say that I’ve captured a corona on timelapse for the first time!
Before leaving you with the the timelapse and images from the night I would like you to know I now have a page on Facebook, come check it out and follow along : www.facebook.com/ianlww. Thanks all!
The Milky Way and Aurora Borealis collided in Denali National Park! What an incredible thing to see!A huge flare of northern lights dance across the sky in Denali National ParkA small ribbon of pink pulses behind the black spruces and over the mountainsAn image of the corona ‘pencils’ flashing overhead!The corona often has a focal point where the beams of light originate from. You can see that focal point here.
