AstroGypsies

“Holy crapola Batman, what the heck?” Looking out the window where I was sitting at our dining table that doubles as my desk, waiting for dark, didn’t even need to wait for that, even with a quarter moon you could see the streaks of red! Grabbed camera, tripod and headed to below the house, then down to the canoe. It’s been a fantasy to get an aurora shot with reflections, with the little red canoe for years! Mission accomplished!

Late on Tuesday night, a powerful explosion went off on the surface of the Sun — an X1.8-class solar flare, originating from sunspot AR3848. The arrival of this fast-moving CME sparked a G4-G5 geomagnetic storm (extreme)!

Times like this I wish I had a wide angle lens! I was taking panoramic shots at 24 mm. Experimenting with ISO and shutter speeds of 3 to 10 secounds. Always worried about focus, hard in the dark. I use the pines as a point to zoom in on! All while marveling at the spectacle. We’d been advised it could be a doozy! But those reds! What causes all these different colours you might ask? Wait, what causes all this spectacle for that matter?

This display, which was captured on cameras across the Northern Hemisphere and as far South as Baja according to friends who saw it, was triggered by a powerful geomagnetic storm. An ejection of the sun’s material, known as coronal mass ejections (CME), was observed on Tuesday night. The ejected material reached Earth on Thursday, resulting in “major geomagnetic activity”. The Northern Lights have been intense lately because of where the sun is in its 11-year solar cycle. It’s at its solar maximum, and with it, there was an unexpected boost in magnetic activity.

Auroras are caused by energized particles from the sun slamming into Earth’s upper atmosphere at speeds of up to 45 million mph (72 million kph). Earth’s magnetic field then redirects the particles toward the north and south poles. The electrically charged particles then enter Earth’s atmosphere, exciting gas atoms and molecules and generating auroras. The process is similar to how neon lights work: When the molecules and atoms get “excited” by electrons, they must return to their original energy (ground state) and do so by releasing the energy as photons (light). The color of the neon light depends on the gas mixture inside the tube, just like the color of auroras depends on the gas mixture in the atmosphere.

What causes those different colours? The most common aurora color is green. Green auroras are typically produced when charged particles collide with high concentrations of oxygen molecules in Earth’s atmosphere at altitudes of around 60 to 190 miles (100 to 300 kilometers), according to the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). We also see green auroras better than any other color, as the human eye is most sensitive to the green color spectrum.

Red auroras are comparatively less frequent and are usually associated with intense solar activity. Reds appear in the Aurora when solar particles react with Oxygen at higher altitudes, generally above 180 to 250 miles. At this height the Oxygen is less concentrated and is “excited” at a higher frequency or wavelength than the denser Oxygen lower down making reds visible.

Yellow and pink can be seen very occasionally, you can see yellow and pink in an Auroral display which are associated with only high solar activity as they are simply a mixture of red with green or blue. Blue and purple are seen less frequently and they tend to appear when solar activity is high. In this case, the colours are caused by particles colliding with our atmosphere at an altitude of 60 miles or less. At these heights, it is a reaction with Nitrogen that causes the Aurora to be tinged with purple or blue and most commonly, you will see these colours towards the lower parts of the display.

After thirty minutes the reds had faded to greens and blues. We decided to go back in and rescue our dinner that we had abandoned at the first sight of the aurora. The broccoli was a soggy mess but hey, well worth the show;) When we went back out after dinner the colours had faded but the green streaks across the sky were beautiful, it was moving in all directions, pulsating. We headed back in to warm up.

Then a friend posting on Facebook, Pierre said GO BACK OUT! Ha! Thanks Pierre! Around 10:30 it had started all over again, all sky, everywhere you looked! Streaks and waves of colour everywhere you looked! Yikes! Where do I point the camera!?

Tired of the canoe yet? Ha!

The majority of auroral displays are predominantly green for two reasons, the first of which is that the human eye detects green more readily than other colours. This is why photographic images of the Northern Lights will often show colours that were not visible at the time to the naked eye.
However, the main factor in determining the colours of any given display is the altitude at which the solar particles collide with our atmosphere. Different gases prevail at different altitudes and in varying concentrations and it is the collision which “excites” these gases that determines the colour of the Aurora.

Earth’s atmosphere is approximately 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.93% argon and 0.04% carbon dioxide. Our air also contains trace amounts of neon, helium, methane, krypton, ozone and hydrogen, as well as water vapor. Thanks Space Weather Canada for all the information!

After climbing up and down the steps what felt like a trillion times, OK, maybe 6 times, going back and forth, new battery, flashlight, dinner…It was time to head in for the night. I stopped one last time below the house to get a bigger all sky/lake shot before calling it a night…it’s a night! What a beautiful night it was!

The colours and rays of light were moving and changing so quickly…Jupiter was rising and the moon had finally set. The Pleiades constellation was covered in aurora:) Something that will stick in our memories for many years to come! I think I have the cover shot for my 2025 Little Red Canoe Calendar, it might make a great December 2025 as well, like Christmas lights all over the sky!

Saludos amigos, marvel at the beauty of our amazing natural world and universe.