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October 24 aurora borealis event
I debated posting these, as I thoroughly missed out on the best of this event. But, due to the search traffic the site is getting for auroras/northern lights (and to make up for all of the non-weather/sky subject matter this month) I decided to post something up. The best of these occured roughly an hour before I saw the social media frenzy about it and finally made it outside. By then, the show was for the most part over - aside from a faint red and green glow invisible to the eye, but enough for a camera to pick up with a long exposure. The intensity of the auroras tonight was totally unexpected, a result of a rather weak and non-earth-directed solar coronal mass ejection (CME). Compounding the problem of missing the show was thick cirrus clouds, though there was just enough of a break to catch the red arc higher in the sky.
These are both just outside of New Baden, both two minute exposures at F4.5 and ISO 400 at 10mm.
![October 24 auroras](/blog2011/oct2411at.jpg) Click to enlarge
![October 24 auroras](/blog2011/oct2411bt.jpg) Click to enlarge
Based on the photos I've seen, the brightness of the auroras at their peak was comparable to the good displays I saw and shot in November 2001 and November 2004, though unfortunately they only lasted a very short time this night. The sun has been active lately, so there may be more of these shows to come over the next few months and beyond.
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