Northern Lights Archives - Light and Landscapes

October Aurora in Shenandoah National Park: Part 2

October 17, 2024 by John Caplis

Having just photographed a G3 strong geomagnetic storm on the night of 7-8 Oct, imagine my surprise when a long lasting X1.8 solar flare on the sun launched another coronal mass ejection (CME) of plasma directly toward the earth on the next night. This CME was expected to arrive during the middle of the day on Thursday, Oct 10. The NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center issued a G4 severe geomagnetic storm watch for 10-11 Oct. In a G4 or G5 storm in Virginia, it is possible to have the aurora directly overhead, with much of the aurora visible to the naked eye.

For those of us in Northern Virginia who missed the G5 extreme storm on May 10th (due to rain and cloudy skies), this was a very exciting development. The May 10th storm was the strongest display of aurora since 2003! As predicted, the effects of the CME began to arrive around noon on 10 Oct.

We departed for Shenandoah National Park around 4:30 pm with high hopes that the CME-driven storm would continue late into the night. We arrived at Hogback Mountain overlook around 6 pm and set up our cameras. As the sun began to dip below the horizon at 7:30 pm, we could already see red aurora to the north reaching high into the sky.

As the skies grew dark, the aurora conditions were approaching G5 extreme storm levels:

The moon was low in the sky and half full. It illuminated what looked like haze (or smoke) in the sky, creating diffuse atmospheric conditions for the aurora.

Taken with a super-wide angle lens at 10 mm. The vertical field of view covers a 120 degree arc from the horizon to directly overhead in the sky. The red aurora at the top of the image was directly over my head when I took this image.

Aurora over Skyline Drive in the eastern sky.

Red aurora in the sky to the south, with the moon peaking out from behind a tree.

The aurora faded after twilight, partially washed out by the moon. However, at 10:20 pm, a severe-strength substorm once again put on an impressive aurora display:

One of my main goals for photographing this G4 storm was to capture multiple aurora colors in the sky at the same time. For weak displays in VA, aurora is usually limited to a red glow on the horizon. For stronger displays, red pillars may be accompanied by a lower layer of green aurora. During a G4 or G5 storm the aurora will extend higher into the sky and may involve additional colors, such as yellow, orange, pink, blue and and violet.

Around 1 am on 11 Oct, another substorm lit up the sky.

The band of green aurora at the bottom was moving so fast, I could not get a fast enough shutter speed to freeze its motion. It looked like green water sloshing around in a glass.

One of the last images of the night, the fading aurora with part of the Milky Way visible overhead.

The NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center recorded the peak of the G4 storm from 1100 am 10 Oct – 0200 am 11 Oct Eastern Standard Time (1500 10 Oct – 0600 11 Oct UTC). KP values during substorms clocked in at 7+ to 8+. It was a wild ride!

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October Aurora in Shenandoah National Park: Part 1

October 16, 2024 by John Caplis

Beautiful aurora over the Front Royal area during a G3 strong geomagnetic solar substorm at 1:00 am on Oct 8th.

I have long desired to get a beautiful image of the aurora in Northern Virginia skies. But up to this point, such images had eluded me. When I got a Kp 7 aurora alert, indicating that conditions for a G3 strong geomagnetic storm had been reached at 10:30 pm on Oct 7, I quickly studied the aurora forecast. Everything looked promising and the skies were clear as a bell. I debated whether to head out at this late hour, but ultimately decided to make the ninety minute drive to the blue ridge mountains.

When we arrived at Hogback Mountain overlook on Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Park, a second substorm started to light up the sky. We quickly set up our cameras and started clicking away. Those beautiful images were finally happening!

This image was taken at 15mm, which covered just over 100 degrees of the horizon in the field of view!

Here were the aurora conditions according to the Spaceweatherlive.com app from the 1:00 am (5:00 UTC) G3 strong geomagnetic substorm. It was listed at Kp 7.3. It lasted around 30 minutes before the aurora faded away again. The aurora did not make another strong appearance for the rest of the night. We headed home around 2:30 am, happy that we had seen a strong aurora display in very clear skies.

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Chasing the Nothern Lights (Aurora Borealis) in the Lofoten Islands of Norway

February 28, 2023 by John Caplis

In late January this year, I traveled to the Lofoten Islands of northern Norway, hoping to capture some dramatic winter light and the aurora. Lofoten is located above the Arctic Circle, which increases your chances of seeing the aurora (the farther north you are, the more likely you are to see it). Lofoten is warmed by ocean currents that keep winter temperatures hovering near the freezing mark, which means you can photograph the aurora at night without enduring bone-chilling temperatures.

To photograph the aurora, several things must happen. You need some solar activity, favorable geomagnetic conditions over the earth’s poles, and a clear sky. Some key indicators of solar activity are increases in the speed and density of the solar wind, the location of the aurora oval in relationship to your location, and the orientation of the interplanetary magnetic field.

A south orientation of interplanetary magnetic field (Bz), with a negative (nT) value greater than -5 is essential for drawing the solar particles down to the polar areas instead of being deflected into space.

Aurora forecast graphics by Kah-Wai Linn Photography.

These items, along with the Kp index, are all good indicators to watch in the aurora forecast. The Kp index ranges from 1 to 9. The higher the number, the more likely you are to see the aurora, and the stronger the display is likely to be. A great resource for the aurora and solar forecast is SpaceWeatherLive.com | Real-time data and plots auroral activity | SpaceWeatherLive.com.

Even with a weak solar forecast, Lofoten is well positioned to have aurora (any night kp2 or greater). But you also need clear skies, which is the real wild card for this area. This region is notorious for a lot of cloudy, wet, windy weather in the winter, that oscillates between rain and snow.

So why travel all the way to Lofoten? The soft winter light in the day, and the chance to capture the aurora over amazing fjord-like, snow covered mountains that rise up vertically from the sea. So you might be wondering, how did it all turn out? My first three nights in Norway, I really didn’t see much aurora. Our first day was spent driving in fog and rain from the airport in Evenes to our red fisherman cabins (called rorbu) in Mortsund. The next two nights were overcast, as we had intermittent snow squalls that came and went throughout most of these days. Conditions improved for the second half of my trip, and we had intermittent sun during the day, and clear skies and the aurora for three consecutive nights. Most of the time the displays were weak and slow moving (usually less than Kp3), but there were occasional bursts of more intense and faster moving activity that were a real sight to behold! A nearly full moon made for nicely illuminated, snow-covered landscapes as foregrounds, and some nice blue color and moonlit clouds in the night skies–it also allowed for short exposure times and low ISO settings. All the images I made were taken with a Canon mirrorless R6 Mk II and a RF 15-35 mm f2.8 lens. Most of these captures were set to f2.8, ISO 1000-1600, and shutter speeds from 2 to 6 seconds. This camera body and lens combination did an excellent job of auto-focusing on lights or snow-covered landscape features at infinity to ensure sharp stars. Here are a few of my favorite images:

Aurora over our rorbu-inspired red cabins at Mortsund.

Aurora over snow covered mountains at Vik.

An amazing twister-like aurora at Myrland Beach

Aurora over the snow covered boulders at Unstad Beach

Fellow workshop friends capturing the aurora at Myrland Beach.

I hope you have enjoyed this post. You can view more of my favorite aurora images from this trip in my gallery Chasing the Northern Lights in the Lofoten Island of Norway.

Finally, I wanted to send out a huge thank you to our very-talented and wonderful workshop leaders, Kah-Wai Lin Photography and Matt Suess Photography (Matt and Whitney) for making this an awesome experience, and to our Norwegian guides Fred Hol and Odd-Are Hansen for their fun-loving and freely offered friendship. I wanted to thank Rachel Jones Ross (and Debbie) of Astralis Photography for sharing her night photography knowledge with me and my other cabin-mates. It was truly a great time.

Group photo courtesy of Matt Suess Photography

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