Quite a spring this 2024 has given us! We started with a fabulous total solar eclipse, and now a fabulous auroral storm. The last great storm was on Halloween of 2003, two decades ago (and two solar cycles ago!). This one was not to be missed. The week started out with the appearance of the massive sunspot group 3668 and 3664, a group so large that it could be seen without magnification (filters? YES! Telescope? No need!). These photos are through a TeleVue 85 with a Nikon D810 and Baader Solar Wedge:
By Friday May 11th, the Space Weather Prediction Center has begun to put out watches then warning for high Kp indices… which ended up reaching a colossal 9 during the storm. We usually begin to see aurora from our latitude when the k index hits 7. This was going to be a large event. By nightfall, I had already set up cameras, extra batteries and wide field lenses to get as much of this as possible.
Early in the darkness, thin wisps of grey were visible moving rapidly and changing shapes within seconds: definitely auroral activity, but no color. The camera was showing green spikes and curtains forming in the northeast. By midnight we had full color, rapidly changing and shifting curtains, arcs, patches, rays and zenithal activity. Changing the cameras to point around the sky, there was even aurora visible in the southern sky! This was one phenomenal event. We are now hearing reports of the aurora being visible in Puerto Rico.
Below are some images taken from the Academy’s soccer fields pointing north and up at the zenith. All were taken with a Nikon D850 20mm lens at f1.4 1000iso 1.3 second exposures.
At the peak of the storm, there was considerable merging of aurora at the zenith. Below id a time lapse of this. The camera took a 1.3 second exposure with a separation of 1 second between each image. Here in the time lapse, each photo frame is 1/10 second in duration. The bright light passing through the video is a med-evac helicopter that passed overhead from Exeter Hospital.