My new habit of checking the spaceweather.com website every day seems to be paying off! Lately I have been getting quite a few nice shots of the Aurora Borealis, thanks in no small part to the information gathered from the spaceweather.com site. On Thursday, September 8th I checked the website just like I do any other day. Thursday's visit to the site revealed that a series of CME's (Coronal Mass Ejections) had occurred on the sun, and that those CME's had occurred on the side of the sun that was facing Earth. When this happens, generally it takes about 48 hours for them to reach our atmosphere... and when they do, beautiful Auroras are the result.
With the knowledge of the incoming CME's, and their expected time of arrival the night of September 10th, I started making my plans. I had to work on the 10th, so I knew that without some solid sack time I would be a zombie before the lights started to flare up. So, as is my normal plan of attack when shooting the Northern lights, I got done with work on the 10th, went home and went straight to bed. I slept from 5:00 PM until 10:00 PM, and was then refreshed enough (I hoped) for a full night of shooting.
As it turns out it was a good thing I got that sleep time in, because the lights didn't really start with any significance until just after midnight, and they continued all night until daylight started to creep into the sky, just before 6:00 AM. This particular photo was made at 4:42 AM along the shores of Lake Superior. Before moving to the shoreline, I had spent most of the night up on Mt. Maude, where the higher elevation provides almost a 360 degree view of the night sky. While on Mt. Maude I took a series of almost 400 photos of the dancing Northern lights and condensed them into a timelapse video, my first ever attempt at such a thing. All in all, it was a tiring, yet very rewarding, night of photography!
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