Geomagnetic Storms!

Brian and I have been in Churchill, Manitoba for about three weeks. While you can see from my other posts that we are having some wonderful experiences, there have been very few auroras compared to last year. At the peak of my frustration with the lack of auroras,  a geomagnetic storm suddenly arrived to give us a spectacular aurora. There were ribbons of swirling light all around the sky. At one point, the movement became quite fast, and suddenly there were shades of pink racing along with the whitish green ribbons. It was an exhilarating experience, and it was not easy to fall asleep after the thrill of the light show. The photos below are ones that Brian took with his new fisheye camera lens.

The fisheye lens allows a view of the sky, larger than your eyes can take in.

I cropped this from a photo taken with the fisheye.This is actually much closer to what you would see.

In Churchill, we find ourselves right under the auroral oval. When we view an aurora in Churchill, it is most often quite a bit above the horizon. When folks are lucky enough to see the lights from our latitude at home (about 42 degrees for Mass and almost 45 degrees in Maine), the aurora looks like one giant curtain touching the horizon. That is because we are looking north toward our latitude of 58 degrees in Churchill. Here, we are often looking right up into the auroral oval, and at those times  you see a cathedral effect, or an oozing mass of light above you. In the photos, it often looks like a burst of light. This is all right overhead. Veils of light can also be seen to the north, south, east, and west.

Looking straight into the curtain of light

 Brian did a great job as the photographer on these nights. The fisheye lens was a bit tricky to focus, but we're learning. The other challenge on these two nights was the speed of the aurora. Usually, you have a longer exposure, but when it moves so fast, you get a blurry photo if you don't make adjustments. Of course, at the dramatic moments, you also have more light. The greatest challenge is trying to adjust camera settings with such extreme temperatures. At a windchill of -30 (sometimes more), it seems like an impossible task. Fortunately, the wind was somewhat mild on these two nights. Meanwhile, I got to just soak in the wonder of the two evenings, while the family photographer worked. I am enjoying the editing process, in the warmth of CNSC.

You can see the cloud cover starting to obscure the lights

 

In the photos up above, you see the old rocket range in the background. The top two photos show the view from our bedroom window, actually. The launchers were used in the late fifties and sixties to study the upper atmosphere. It is amazing to me that we knew so little, and learned so much in such a short span of time. Much of the aurora research happened in Churchill, extending into the next two decades. 

The fisheye lens is a good choice for capturing the auroral excitement overhead.

Tuesday night, an unexpected CME, a coronal mass ejection from the sun, sparked another aurora. This one was even more exceptional! There were arrows of light raining down, more ribbons (think of green ribbon candy from years ago), and a corona of light that looked a bit like petals of a flower opening. There was a cathedral of light all around us. Even better, I got to watch this from the comfort of our beautiful dome at CNSC.  I was outside for some time, but it gets chilly when the aurora surprises us with such a lengthy stay.

Here is the dome, which fits about 5-7 people

Stairway to the heavens

Last week, the full moon made it difficult to see the mild auroras around us. However, on Tuesday night, we had the thrill of watching the moon rise over the tundra pond during the aurora. Again, the photos are Brian's handiwork with the camera.

We savored every moment of the auroras. Now, we are preparing for a blizzard. Up here, that means a ton of wind and blowing snow, but not too much snow. I believe the next post will be on Churchill weather!