Payson Aurora Suprise !
May 27 - 28, 2017

Uploaded 5/28/17



            

            
Left:  The Kp index for the last 24 hours, 
the peak time was at the left side, when 7 actual
was reached.  This is when we had the green skies.
a few hours later, the pink skies returned and
the blue rays followed.


 A
            Coronal Mass Ejection from the Sun impacted last night and pushed
            the proton flux (Kp index) up above 6 for many hours. Fortunately
            for us, it happened at night and alerted to the rising Kp, I
            set up the camera on the balcony and let it run with its self
            timer for many hours. The results were quite interesting! As
            soon as it got dark around 9pm, the sky had a few low pink glows
            near the northern horizon. Then they faded and greens started
            to intensify, peaking around 11:20pm but lasting for many hours.
            The pinks returned around 1:30 and then green and bluish rays
            formed over the pinks. By 2:30 the act had mostly faded as you
            can see in the last shot.


            

            
Sequence of shots every five minutes
from 8:30 to 2:00am. Note the color changes
in the sky!
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Initial reds near the horizon early on.
The rest of the sky is either neutral grays
or greenish from the nightly air glow.
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Sky turning green fast!  Very strong green
glows in the entire northern sky.  This is
NOT normal air glow.
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The greens faded a bit, but by 1:25am
some pinks returned and a blue ray can be
seen here protruding upward.  The rising
Milky Way is on right side.
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By 1:30 most glows had faded and the sky
was returning to its normal appearance.
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Instrument:  Sigma 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens
Platform:  Tripod - no tracking
Camera:  Hutech Modified Canon XTi @ ISO800
Exposure:  5m
Filters:  None
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing  8/10, Transparency 8/10
Outside Temperature:  45F
Processing Tools:  Photoshop CS2, Maxim DSLR
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