Mar. 23, 2023: Northern Lights - finally
All text and images copyright Michael E. Lockwood, all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted.
The last time I saw a decent northern lights display in Illinois was in 2003.
One night there was a very strong display that I saw from my house in Champaign, IL. It was not a dark location, so it was a bright display. I'm not sure who told me about or how I heard, possibly the TV weatherman alerted me. At that point I didn't have an internet connection.
The next night I was driving between Bloomington and Champaign and I was pleasantly surprised to see a display start out my driver's side window. I got off of I-74 and headed north a bit, pulled off on a county road, and watched a beautiful display of curtains in the northern sky for a while. It subsided, and then I drove the rest of the way home. I did not have a good camera at the time, and digital cameras were still a novelty and were being developed.
Before that the display, the last time I had seen the northern lights was an incredible display in northern Michigan in the spring of 1990, a few months before we moved to the Cincinnati area. It started off in the northern sky as we were driving home from a banquet. One half of the sky was lighter than the other, and when we got home it became a full sky display with a full corona overhead. We were literally under the aurora in our back yard. I think the whole family saw it, but I can't remember. It finally subsided, and I remember watching the southern sky flicker. We didn't shoot any photos, I don't think we knew how to.
Since I moved to my house/shop in 2010, I have been hoping to see a decent display and get some photos. I did get some shots of red aurora on Sept. 7, 2017, and the best is below.
This display happened while it was still twilight, and harvest was in full-swing. The two glows on the horizon just right of center are combines harvesting crops, so there was a lot of dust in the air, and this accounts for the reddish-orange hue in the sky. Thus, the display was not ideal for photogaphy, but I got some red pillars in some images before it completely went away..... just as it was getting darker, of course. Other displays have been hidden by clouds at my location.
I did manage to catch one display at Okie-Tex in 2013, where I got some nice shots of the red aurora, and also I captured one of my favorite images of all time - an all-sky image of the red glow, the Milky Way, the Gegenschein, and observers and telescope on the field. (I really need to re-submit that to APOD at some point.)
Anyway.... fast forward to March 23, 2023, a very nice Sunday night. It was kind of cold, and the K-index was spiking earlier in the day. Europe got a great display, so I assumed that the best had already been seen by another continent, but I kept an eye on the K-index and the Bz, the most important component of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF). Bz was -20 nT (negative is south pointing) or more in amplitude, which was the largest number I had ever seen for that component of the IMF. South pointing means that magnetic field will couple with the north pole of Earth and particles can stream in, creating aurora.
I was talking to Ed, the creator of Elvira, the amazing 24" f/2.75 telescope, and he lives in Montana. It was cloudy where he was, but I kept checking the sky as we talked. After we finished our conversation, I put on my coat and hat, stepped outside, dark adapted for a few minutes, and noted a dark region near the norther horizon, and a lighter area above it.
At first I thought it was a cloud, but after getting out the camera, I suddenly realized that the brighter area was a green aurora! Above it, red pillars were starting to appear and disappear. I started shooting photos as I watched the display.
I quickly realized that the viewfinder in my Canon Ra (R alpha) mirrorless camera was FAR better than the visual view. It showed obvious, vivid red and green color, and there was motion! I couldn't believe it. I kept shooting with my 24mm lens at about f/2, and watched the display intensify. Here is the first good image that I acquired.
As the display got better, I decided that I wanted to finally get one of the photos on my bucket list - images of an aurora over my house/shop. So I nearly ran to the south and set the tripod down and started shoooting. The red curtains were really growing quite tall, and were moving. I noticed movement in the green areas, too. This was my favorite shot from this next location.
I decided to relocate a couple hundred feet farther south for a better view, and the curtains grew to nearly 50 degrees high, I estimated. This was the peak of the display, around 11:15 pm CDT.
The green area had begun to pulsate and flicker rapidly, in a type of motion that I had not seen since 1989, yet different because I was not underneath it. I shot still photos because I didn't know how to start a video on this camera, but I'm glad that I did get the still photos.
Below was my favorite shot from the south property line, at the time of the tallest red curtains, and certainly the brightest display of green, and brightest moments overall of the display. (FYI the green light from the house is from the generator, and the red light in the window near it is a large LCD clock.)
As the display subsided a bit, I walked north and went back in the shop to get my phone and flashlight. I texted one friend and finally found the record button for video. Then I shot video intermittently for the next hour or so before going inside.
I checked periodically to see if the display was intensifying again, but it did not. I simply went outside with the Ra camera and looked in the viewfinder (not the LCD). It gives a full-color, intensified view that shows the aurora much more distinctly than I could see them with my eyes, and it had a high enough frame rate to show motion superbly.
So, from now on, my aurora detector is going to be the Canon Ra held up to my eye with a fast lens on it. This saves time dark adapting, and shows much fainter displays. Hopefully I can exploit this capability many more times during this solar maximum.
I ended the evening watching the shrunken display in motion in the far north through my garage door window. I went out on the deck and sipped a little bit of beer while catching a couple of Lyrid meteors, which was my original reason to be out under the sky that night, but I was happy to trade meteor watching for a beautiful display of aurora. Now I can check these images off the list.
The last image that I really want is a bright comet over the house. I did get a nice shot of NEOWISE in the morning sky in the northeast, but that was from the house. Now I am realizing I never posted that photo - yet another thing to do.
I'll stop writing now before I remember more things that I forgot to post.
Please check back for future installments of "In the Shop".
Mike Lockwood
Lockwood Custom Optics