On Tuesday night, the aurora borealis was visible through a
huge amount of the country, including Colorado!
The first time I ever got to see them was last year, and while we've tried to see them a couple times since, the later attempts tended to capture a faint glow at best.
The ones on Tuesday were
amazing.
The colors were most intense early.
(This is brighter than it appeared to the naked eye, but the color
was visible even without a camera, both the reds and the greens. It was so cool!)
We went up north and east to try and get away from the city lights, which was very worthwhile, though it was visible even from within the city. I even caught an extremely weak pinkish glow from my apartment window. Taylor got a better picture of them from behind their house.
There was this little flare of brighter green that would appear and disappear from the lower right.
Seven more pictures of the auroras:
I did really like how many stars were also visible.
This was looking directly upwards at the stars. So many stars (milky way, again!), and even directly upwards was faintly pink.
Eventually the redder tones started to fade a bit, but then the green got a bit more vibrant, which was also very cool.
We were parked out on a little rural dirt road. It is a county road, but eventually someone came over to the car to "check if we were okay" since we were on "his" road. It's not a private road, but we don't want to freak anyone out, either. We told him we were just looking at the auroras, which he seemed surprised by. They were fading a bit by then, so we decided to head back home.
As we left the highway back in the metro area, we saw that the color was back in the sky! While we were back within the city, it was still very visible. We pulled over near a neighborhood park to take another look.
This is not with a long/"night mode" exposure; the night mode washed it out, while this is actually relatively close to (though a little brighter than) what it looked like even without my camera.
It was kind of nice that the peak visibility for the auroras hit really early. We had time to get out and see some really spectacular views of them, but also got to come home by about 10:30, ha.
And the forecast was that they were supposed to be even stronger on Wednesday night!
While we were delighted that we'd gotten to see them on Tuesday, we made plans to head out and try to see them again on Wednesday, leaving right from my office when I got off of work.
...And it was cloudy.
So I'm
extra glad we took full advantage on Tuesday, rather than waiting and betting on the "even stronger" forecast. There
were some nice lights on Wednesday, if you could get away from the cloud cover, though I don't think they ever hit quite as strong as the ones from Tuesday.
We tried for several hours to get to a good spot, but just never quite managed it. We were stuck behind the clouds, even when we pushed about as far east as we could justify trying to go. Once the clouds did finally start to break up and it got nice and clear... the lights were about done. We got a very faint glow, but hardly worth writing home about, especially compared to the night before!
Though once it did clear up, there were some really nice stars:
So many stars! Cassiopeia in the upper left. (I am not good at very many constellations, but I recognize a handful.)
And Orion!
I'm not sorry that we tried on Wednesday, and we had a nice time anyway (got some snacks, waited and stargazed, read some book), I had emphatically not wanted it to be an hours-and-hours-long excursion... but as we kept pushing farther east, and then waiting for it to clear, and then of course having to get back home, it turned into a 6+ hour journey. We left straight from work after I got off at 6, and then didn't make it home until after midnight, sobcry.
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andersenmom
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