One of the best auroral
            displays in years occured on the evening of the 14th through
            the morning of the 15th of this May. The cause was a CME event
            from an M type flare on the sun, quite rare in this point in
            the solar cycle which is within a year of solar minimum. You
            can see from the proton flux graph on the right that when we
            started the robotic Aurora Cam at 11:30, the Kp was still to
            low to show anything visually and there was no way to know if
            it was going to get better. A few hours after we went to bed,
            the Kp shot up and Bz strongly southward. The Kp hit 9 about
            2am, and the aurora was very intense with rare purple colors
            and some rays. These images are the results of that all night
            sequence, starting at the begining when we set it up to 4am when
            I woke up and shut it down because the morning twilight was getting
            strong. Note that all the images are not only tracked equatorially,
            but have exactly the same field, over and over. This is unique
            to the Aurora Cam.
 

Click on any thumnail below for a bigger view (1024 x 768)


            


            
Frame 14, near 2am.  One of the best frames.
You can see Polaris below center and the Big
Dipper off to the left.  The top of the frame is
at the zenith with this fisheye lens.  The aurora
grades from brick reds to violets to blues.

            


            
The arrow indicates where we started the
camera, the blue line shows how the Kp index
quickly shot to 9 shortly afterwards !


Here is the complete sequence from our Aurora Cam (click to enlarge)


Instrument:  16mm f/2.8 Zenitar Fisheye at f/3.5
Platform:   Aurora Cam with Robotic Barndoor
Film:  Supra 400
Exposure:  10 mins
Filters:  NONE
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5100 ft.
Sky:  Seeing 8/10, Transparency 7/10
Outside Temperature:  10 C
Processing: Photoshop CS
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