May 15, 2005 Blair Nebraska Auroras(very early a.m.)

Real quickly, these were all shot from Blair Nebraska. First one here was right when it started(11-12ish..May 14th). It then let up some and kicked back in at around 2:30 a.m. Sunday morning. It was simply an amazing show that lasted on and on. These are all in a timeline order from top to bottom. All shot with a canon digital rebel with 17-40L lens. Most all at 17mm. All at ISO 400. Most all at F4 and between 10 and 30 seconds. Not sure I had any that were even 30 seconds long.

For those that keep mentioning me in the image. Well that is not me, that is my dad. I got myself last time. It was someone elses turn this time. It was the least I could do after waking them up and crawling all over their roof at 2:30 a.m.

Also for the unknowing, Auroras aren't this bright to the eye. The long exposure it takes to get them can really bring out what is happening. They usually look green or whitish to the eye and move around alot. In these extreme cases you can see the red with your eyes. The reds are often in a more fixed wall or torch looking thing like happened later. Well they look that way when they are closer to an overhead location. They move around as beams or pillars when they are more off on the horizon. The ow greens are the most common, then the reds would be more rare, while the violets seen at the bottom here are quite rare. The shots way at the bottom are looking almost straight up at what is called the corona. This was an extreme class geomagnetic storm(G5). That is the top of the scale. The November display in 2004 was the same but wasn't quite as good as this one.....amazingly enough.