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!
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!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.
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.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!
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!
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 mixing of the reds and the greens was fascinating and differed from the distinctly separated watermelon auroraThe mixing of the reds and the greens was fascinating and differed from the distinctly separated watermelon auroraDo you see the angel in this Aurora?
It’s the great debate. As an Alaskan, winter resident, are you a skier? or do you don the snowshoes? I think the questions really waters down to : how much do you like getting off trails? Because, although I realize cross country skis CAN BE USED for off-road style outdoor adventure, I see that happening on a very limited basis. Anybody want to chime in here? I snowshoe because if you want to explore the woods during the winter you need mobility, and besides, I fall less on snowshoes :D.
Living in Fairbanks has proved to be a far different winter than my experiences of three years in Maine and my childhood (22 years a child) in Minnesota. One of the primary differences in the winter here in the interior is the wind! I have never seen anything like it, and my friends from Minnesota won’t believe this – we do not have wind. Blizzards, the bane of Minnesotan school systems, are unheard of here. In fact, school systems in Fairbanks do not close when the mercury dip to -40, they close when the weather warms up resulting in icy conditions! Snow that accumulates on railings and fence posts is likely to be in the same pile when the spring thaw begins. The stillness of the wind creates an interesting climactic condition in Fairbanks known as the ‘temperature inversion’. During the winter, the winds are an important mixer of air and because that mixing does not happen here, strong differentials are set as you climb elevation; in short, cold air is trapped in the valleys of the Interior region. This has a couple of ramifications, the first is as a home-owner you would rather have your house high on a hillside, because in extreme cases it could mean an extra 50 degrees of warmth! (http://www.alaskareport.com/science10059.htm). Secondly, below the inversion the development of ‘ice fog’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_fog) is a pest for home-owners and can build up on your house and car. I have watched this ice fog man mornings while studying from the Margaret Murie building on top of campus- a good example picture is shown in the Wikipedia article I’ve listed. The ice fog creates havoc for humans and incredible beauty in the wilderness. The white spruce, willow, dogwood and shrub birch become encases in ice crystals and look like long-forgotten freezer burned hotdogs. As you walk through the areas of hoar frost it is not hard to imagine scuba-diving through a snow-reef; the trees the coral and the snow the sand.
I’ve had a great time snowshoeing some of the lower and higher elevation areas of the Fairbanks. I’ve been focusing on Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest and the Murphy Dome region. Some of the days have been cold and require some extra face protection, but the views and sights have been exquisite. Although I did not see any wildlife, during my last trip to Murphy Dome I followed a fresh set of moose tracks, and found scat so fresh that I made sure to keep a watchful eye for any watching eyes; I was sure I was going to walk up on a moose. Snowshoe hair tracks were abundant as were red fox, mouse, and ptarmigan.
Snowshoe hare tracks were common in the Murphy Dome region. Here you can see them, their heart shaped print is very identifiable.
The series of images below represent the two different winter types of Alaska. The first three are all from Bonanza Creek. You’ll see that the wind doesn’t blow here too often, and tree-corals abound! The the sunlight illuminates them it is snowshoe stopping, many pauses were taken to observe the beauty of this classic,winter, wonderland!
The snow here is so light and fluffy, that even a small puff of wind will send snow flying. Here, you can see the havoc as a breeze (a rare wind!) pushed snow off the branches and into my face.Branches laden with light snow were lit up by the sunlight. Every new bend in the trail brought about new illuminated trees to focus on.All the gear and the views! Heres a look towards the river valley at Bonanza creek experimental forest. Warm boots, gloves and jacket!
This second set of images shows life in the ice fog area. The trees here are heavily laden with icy and snow and are bent and stopped. A stark contrast to the lightly laden branches of the bottom lands! The low-lying sun cast long shadows around all the trees. This time of year the sunrises at 10:20 AM and sets at 3:00 PM. The short days are illuminated by a sun that slides along the horizon, rather than going overhead and the cold sets fast once the sun is no longer keeping it at bay.
The longs shadows of the low sun played on the snow. The warm color of the sun was spectacular! The reds, yellows and oranges you see here are completely natural.Here I am posing in from the hoar-frost-coral-trees on top of Murphy Dome. Cold and stunning!The shadow of the this 6-foot white spruce cast by the low-lying sun is almost 30 feet long!Hoar frost behind, views in front! This picture was actually taken with my phone, you’ll see the selfie arm in my face mask.
I wanted to leave you all with a short timelapse video of the sunset on Murphy Dome. This timelapse is comprised of 530 shots over an 1.25 hours time and is played at 30 frames per second. Some of you read in my post about my problems with my camera in the cold shooting the Aurora. I wanted to shoot this timelapse in good light conditions at similar temps (-10 degrees F) and see how my camera reacted. It did pretty well, and makes me think that some of my issues with the Aurora shoot were due to the High ISO and a stressed sensor. Lots more to learn!
My goal of this timelapse video was to capture the changing shadows on the hillside and the sunset. Enjoy!
