Aurora
Brooklin, ON (north end of Whitby), 9:37pm, 10/24/2011
Nikon D3s ISO 1600 2s exp f/3.2 14mm tripod, cable release
An Aurora image. Brooklin ON is at the north end of Whitby ON, on the north shore of Lake Ontario east of Toronto. It’s in the Bortle 10 dead zone of light pollution and not the best place to observe the night sky. On this night, it did not matter. I shoot a lot of time-lapse, and when I set up on this evening, I intended to shoot time-lapse to capture the aurora which we could see had begun to fire up. I have a rule of thumb, never interrupt a sequence because you never know what is going to happen. I am so glad I interrupted this one! The aurora began as a thin green arc in the north, as they so often do. We (Tony Ward and I) did not think much of it, but then we realized that something was changing. Soon, Aurora crashed over us like a tidal wave and the whole sky was crimson red, in every direction. Even looking south, the aurora was red. Looking up we had the vortex experience of auroral lines going straight up to infinity. My exposures were too long. I had to cut down to two seconds. The show lasted about 30 minutes before it began to fade. We called everyone we knew on our cell phones to tell them to look up. It was the thrill of a lifetime.
