On Thursday night, April 6th a gigantic solar storm slammed into the northern hemisphere of the Earth and created huge auroral displays as far south as Florida. Here in Arizona, a large ruby red moving glow was seen in the north west over Perseus and Auriga. These images were taken about 8:30pm that evening from the balcony on the back of our house here in Payson, and show the extent of the phenomenon. Auroras are extremely rare in southern latitudes, and only once every 10 years do we get a visible display.
The first image, is a 5 minute exposure with a 35mm camera on a stationary tripod with a 28mm f/2.8 lens on Kodak PJ400 film. The stars of Auriga and Perseus form short arcs during this time exposure. Part of our house is visible to the lower left.
This 10 minute exposure with the same setup, actually overexposes the aurora, but shows how it slowly changed over a period of 10 minutes or so between exposures. half an hour later, the aurora had subsided, and the red glow was gone for the rest of the night.
If you saw any aurora on this evening, drop me a line!
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