Friday, December 15, 2006

Why I love my job reason 1122....


AURORA ALERT!

"A coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth today at approximately 1400 UT, and the impact may cause strong geomagnetic storms. Stay tuned for updates. "-spaceweather.com (Dec 14/06)





Aurora Borealis (Northern Hemisphre, Aurora Australis for Southern). On our way back to Ottawa we were lucky enough to get a little view of some Aurora activity dancing throughout the sky. I apologize for the grainyness of the shots but I wanted to make sure I could capture the great view I had. This photo shows Ottawa glowing in the distance with the northern lights overhead. It was amazing the amount of sky it was covering and I haven't seen this good of a show since I left the north.




Looking north out of my window I was lucky enough to be able to watch the lights dance for about 20 minutes before we had to decsend. Once we got lower the light pollution from the city blocked the view of them. In the north I have seen them light up the sky like the moon would and you could hear it too like the sound of static building on a comb as you brush your hair. A small electrical type buzz. The north is good for a few things and Aurora Borealis is one of them. The other good thing is long days in summer and that's about it ;)



This is a 15 second exposure at max ISO. I wanted to get this shot but in my view finder the camera didn't show anything at all when I tried to frame the shot. So I just clicked and 15 seconds later this came up. Not great quality but still shows you what I was looking at. Pretty amazing stuff.



I was browsing around looking at some web sites and for some information and NASA has a greaaaat site called Spaceweather.com. They document Aurora pictures as people send them in and this picture below was taken last night at the same time I was taking mine. There are many more and some of them are simply amazing. Enjoy.



Photo by M. Scott Moon Soldonta, Alaska

4 comments:

Lost Av8r said...

Cool stuff buddy, I've been noticing the night sky is pretty wild with week. Got my own photos I'll share this weekend...

now, must go sleep...

James said...

ooooooo, aren't you so special. You get to see Northen lights. well hmmmph, here in cloudy Halifax I got to see clouds. ya, waaaaaay better than Northern Lights. so there!

I mean think of it this way, seeing incredible dispays of northern lights would simply remind you of being back in Thompson. Do you want that??? NOOOOO I don't think so.

Great pics man!

k said...

That is freakin' awesome! We were in Alaska in late August, but weren't timed right for auroral activity, and got none of it! (Got lots of good pics, but no lights :( ) Thanks for sharing yours!

Flyin Dutchman said...

I should requested a 90 degree turn into the northern lights as it would have been awesome to have them right off the nose of the plane. I need to rig up a tripod type dealio in the plane with cushions so the long exposure night shots are not so shaky.

You done exams yet there nutz ?