Aurora Borealis

Mariposa, 2024

The strongest geomagnetic storm in over two decades hit the Earth on the night of May 10-11, 2024. The G5 storm, unleashed from huge sunspot group 3664 by a solar flare on May 8th, was clearly visible in the All Sky camera at my observatory in Mariposa, California.

Aurora in Mariposa, California May 10-11, 2024

Fairbanks 2023

We travelled 25 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska to Borealis Basecamp, where we were fortunate to see the Northern Lights – Aurora Borealis – on one of our three nights.

The Aurora Borealis shines above the ‘Igloos’ at Borealis Basecamp on the night of September 13, 2023
The aurora light show changes dramatically over the space of just a few minutes.
The green and pink colors of the Aurora are caused by the excitation of Oxygen atoms high in the Earth’s atmosphere by the solar wind.
The Aurora blazes over the Borealis Basecamp restaurant, “Latitude 65”, while a lens-distorted Jupiter looks on in the upper right.
A time lapse covering 44 minutes of Aurora seen from Borealis Basecamp, north of Fairbanks on September 13, 2023. 67 individual frames, captured with a Canon EOS R camera/Rokinon 14mm/f2.8 lens.