Once again, the night sky glowed an eerie ruby red in the north, alit from the intense bombardment of protons in the upper atmosphere from a solar outburst. This one from a huge coronal hole in the Suns photosphere, and the Kp index soared for over 20 minutes to 6.0 or so. We shot these images at the moment of highest Kp, in hopes of getting this photo/visual display. This is a pretty low Kp for seeing aurora in Arizona, but this proves it is possible. We observed the ruddy glow visually as well as moving red patches below the dipper and Polaris. There are 4 reasons we are successful from our latitude in getting these events on film:
1. Always shoot when the Kp is over 6
2. We are over a mile in elevation, and the skies are very transparent.
3. There is no city north of us which causes a light dome.
4. The aurora here is nearly always red, with green streamers superimposed on occasion, so we use primarily a red sensitive emulsion - Either Kodak PJ400 or Supra 400.
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Previous Uploads: Photographing the Payson Aurora on August 17, 2003 First Nighttime Tests of New Allsky Camera A New All Sky Camera for 35mm and Digital Photography New images of Comet Linear WM1In Cetus on 12/06/01 New images of Linear WM1 11/09/01 Another Major Northern Lights Display from Payson, Arizona The fading comet linear A2 More lunar Closeups - 3 The art of Deconvolving Lunar Images Comet Linear A2 with Jet Sprays Three faces of Comet Linear Comet Linear A2 6-27-01 Van Cittert Deconvolution of the Lunar Highlands More Northern Lights and the ISS over Payson The NGC891 Galaxy Group Notes CCD Shots during Full Moon Comet Linear July 19 & 25th, 2000 Latest image of Comet Linear S4 Spectacular Red Aurora over Payson Arizona Fuji's New Formulation of it new Super HQ100 FIRST TESTS OF HYPERED FUJI HQ100 First Schmidt shots with PJ400 First Tricolor shots with 2415 Test Images with Fuji NPH400 First Two Comets with the new CCD Camera