No Sleep for You
20mm @ f/1.8 2.5s ISO 200
Living in the North, I’m always keeping an eye out for geomagnetic activity. April 23rd brought a fantastic light show to much of Scandinavia, but few places truly got to enjoy the magic due to the shorter nights.
Here in Canada, I had been watching the effects of a full coronal CME that erupted from the Sun three days earlier. Darkness could go ahead and hurry up, while the clouds could take a break — right? The FOMO was real that day. Bedtime arrived and I was faced with the conundrum we’re all familiar with; stay up and see if things get good, or sleep and have a better day tomorrow. All of the data in the aurora tracking apps suggested the storm was ramping down. There were no barns left to burn after 12 hours of dazzling lights. Plus, the typical nighttime cloud cover was rolling off the Rockies any minute.
My teeth were brushed and I took one last peek out the window. The familiar white sheets were accompanied by bursts of green visible to the naked eye. A greasy forehead mark on the glass, curtains swaying, and I was flying down the staircase. By the time I was in the backyard, the purple was even faintly visible while I began dialling in the exposure and framing up a hasty composition. We had an extremely narrow window of clear sky open up just in time.
The next day brought the intoxicating mix of tiredness and satisfaction. Aurora can be thousands of kilometres long, stretching across the sky. To that end, I like to think that the Northen Lights are a group experience. Maybe you caught a glimpse wherever you are.
