How one astroimager learned to love the Northern Lights

This is my open letter to all aurora chasers.

After returning home from a successful trip to the 2024 Okie-Tex Star Party in early October, I received alerts from SpaceWeather.com indicating increased activity on the Sun. Predictions called for a severe geomagnetic storm, with a chance of auroral activity as far south as Alabama.

I silenced those alerts and went to bed.

Some of you may wonder why I didn’t immediately get excited, gas up the car, and bring my gear out to try and get some aurora pictures. Well, let me tell you my story.

My history with aurorae

Before getting into photography, I had a chance to see an auroral outburst in 2003 in Wisconsin. It was during another active solar cycle. I wasn’t much into astronomy then, but I recognized it as an aurora, stopped the car I was driving, watched for a few minutes, and locked the unforgettable sight in my mind.

Within a year I would see auroral curtains near my home in Michigan. Back then, there were no alerts for possible auroral activity. If you happened to be out when the aurora was going, you saw it.

Nowadays, it is possible to know when a coronal mass ejection (CME) has occurred, and if its trajectory intersects Earth. When we get these alerts, we realize that in a day or two there may be an aurora. There are many other factors involved, but they’re out of our control. So, there’s still quite a bit of luck involved in getting yourself to a place to see aurorae. Then, once you set up, you may see anything from a faint glow on the horizon to a visibly colorful aurora dancing in the night sky. Or you may see a lot of clouds or nothing.

Aurorae and social media

With all of the advanced alerts dedicated to aurorae, we have chasers racking up lots of miles. With every outburst, a new set of people decide they want to see the aurora for themselves, and they join groups of chasers. These groups don’t promise sightings, but in forums and on social media, we have a routine that goes like this:

Chaser A: There is a big chance aurora will happen!
Chaser B: I’ll be at (some place), join me.
Naysayer Norman: It probably won’t be any good.
Negative Nancy: It’s going to be cloudy.
Chaser A: Forecasts have dwindled.
Know-It-All Nolan: It’s not worth it, another false alarm.
Super Astrophotographer Andy: I got a great image back when I went to Iceland, check this out.

The next day:

Chaser B: Well, I was by myself, but it was an amazing display. Here are some pictures from my phone.
Chaser A: Very good. I saw later that an outburst did occur for a short time.
Negative Nancy: That picture is fuzzy, it must not have been very bright.
Naysayer Norman: The aurora must have been faint, it only looks halfway decent because of your camera.
Super Astrophotographer Andy: It’s all right, but doesn’t compare to this overhead photo that I got from Alaska.
Know-It-All Nolan to Super Astrophotographer Andy: Is that an AI-generated image? That can’t be real! Aurora isn’t that bright in real life.

In all pursuits we find characters like this in social media forums. Unfortunately, there’s no stopping the self-serving banter that discourages others from enjoying chasing of the northern lights.

My view is if there is any chance of aurorae happening, embrace it, let the people chase, and don’t write anything negative in a forum if you can’t write something positive. The love of aurorae and all things astronomy shouldn’t be about ourselves; it should be about whatever is going on in the night sky that captivates many. Those who love chasing aurorae face a lot of dark nights with nothing but skyglow. But they get lots of healthy endorphins when lights seem to just explode all over the sky.

May 10, 2024

Make no mistake, I’m not an aurora chaser. I’m a Milky Way photographer. I go to star parties to see it in all its glory, from horizon to horizon. I also travel to other dark sites to take pictures of all aspects of the Milky Way, and at different times of night, including twilight. Only in really dark and transparent regions on Earth can you see the Milky Way beginning to appear in twilight. That’s when you know it’s bright.

It was precisely nautical twilight on May 10, 2024, in Lambton Shores, Ontario, when an amazing display began. At the time, I thought the only way I’d see aurora at that latitude was on the horizon.

Lots of you probably have seen aurorae as a faint glow of green or red on the horizon. To you, the northern lights may not be much of a big deal, and only look good when photographed. Well, I may not be an aurora chaser, but that night taught me one thing — we skeptics are wrong about how amazing the aurora can be.

The May 10 geomagnetic storm drew comparisons to the Carrington Event of September 1859. The others were good for smaller periods of time but captivating to those who were able to see them. Here’s how the events that night unfolded for me.

I was setting up one of my cameras when I detected a bright light to my left. “Who’s got a flashlight on?” I shouted out to no one in particular. “I’m trying to set up for aurorae.”

The light persisted. I turned in its direction but saw no one there but a gentleman who wasn’t holding a flashlight. I then realized the source of the light was coming from above him. When I looked up, I saw something I’d never seen in an aurora before, nor had I ever seen it so brightly above me. The curtain was angled towards the zenith, and it appeared to be right on top of me!

I also saw the so-called “Corona Borealis,” which is when you see the lights dance at the zenith and “pour” around you on all sides. This is another hint that the aurora is directly above your location, and the colors are easily naked-eye visible.

Then I saw the raging aurora on the horizon in all directions. The pinks, reds, and greens were easily visible. People had come to this park to camp and were stunned as they filtered onto the beach to watch. We had a major light show on our hands!

I aimed my camera in every direction. I finally set up a composite so that the waxing crescent Moon, slowly setting, would show as it looked to the human eye. Some of the colors, such as blue and yellow, would show up well in an image I took looking out over Lake Huron. This would be one of my favorite shots of this bright, colorful phenomena. 

And I do mean bright. I could tell as night fell that the lights from the towns were not as bright as the aurora in the sky. This was new for me.

This geomagnetic storm was strong enough for people to walk outside and take pictures of the aurora with smartphones. Then they took over the internet for a day and a half. I posted a few images, but, as expected, they got lost in the crowd. We were literally flooded with aurora pics from that event.

Because I saw that event firsthand, along with other outbursts and getting some decent images, I’ve reached a level where I’m content. But I respect other peoples’ desire to see this phenomenon repeatedly. I feel sad for those who want to see it, but have the cares of life drown out their opportunities to do so. And I also feel for those who spend a lot of money to take a trip to a location such as Iceland or Alaska, only to be clouded out or not see much due to the Sun refusing to spew CMEs our way while people take the trips. I also smile when I read of aurora chasers seeing a major outburst and regarding it as the best ever. How soon we forget our other best-ever moment, even if it was just a few months ago. I guess we tie our emotions to seeing such beauty in nature.

Is the Big One ahead?

Are we due for a really big outburst that rivals, or even matches the Carrington Event? If we get one, there will be both amazement and chaos. The aurora will dance overhead and smartphones will be on hand to record it and flood the internet. That is, if phones and our very infrastructure haven’t been blown out!

If they are, the first thing people may notice is how slow their social media platforms are to upload the fantastic pictures they’ve taken. Then comes the realization that power is out at their location. The amazement of seeing the aurorae gradually gets replaced by the horror that things don’t work. We could be in the throes of a Carrington-like event.

During the original Carrington Event, the activity in Earth’s magnetic field was so strong it induced electrical currents in telegraph wires, causing sparks and fires. After telegraph operators removed their power supplies, they realized they could still send messages using the current induced by the geomagnetic storm alone. It must have been as shocking to them as it would be to us if, during an auroral storm, our smartphones suddenly began wirelessly charging.

One thing’s for sure: If I were a power company, it would be a good time to make sure there’s a lot of insulation and grounding for our devices. With each auroral outburst I’d be taking readings and making sure I’m fending off external sources of power so as not to be overloaded. I’d also be preparing to act in the event we do get hit with a major CME that blows satellites out of low Earth orbit and threatens to create chaos all over the planet.

And if those power companies succeed in shielding us from the worst, then that will turn into the best aurora display of our generation. It’ll be remembered fondly by aurora chasers with tears in their eyes and camera memory cards that are too full to take another image.

Until that happens, I’ll leave the chasing to everyone else and go do some more creative Milky Way photography.