Norrthern Lights (30 Mar 22)

On March 30, 2022, a brief G1 Solar Storm impacted the earth and created a northern lights display that was visible over the northern high plains to Washington State.

For my location in southeastern Wyoming, the aurora was visible only as a deep red glow without structure. This type of display is referred to as a photographic vs. visual aurora. The camera "sees" much more than the eye. Red glow in the night sky is difficult to detect because the eye's cone receptors are just not physically made for seeing contrast.

This event was very unusual in that the Kp of 4.5 was well under the ~Kp of 7.5 that is required to detect northern lights from Cheyenne, WY (geomagnetic latitude of 50N). The bright light at left is due north. The northern lights were about 1000 miles to my north. What you are seeing in this clip is just the top of the aurora where oxygen at 300 miles up is being energized to create the red color.

This clip begins at 9:27PM MDT and ends at 10:39PM. The peak aurora is obvious at 10:13PM. A fujifilm X-T3, 16-55mm Fujifilm lens at ~20mm, F/3.2, iso2500, exp 13s with 3 sec gap between frames (510 frames played back at 10ps), RAW format post processed in Photoshop cc.