While taking a night sky workshop in Death Valley in March, I was treated to something I never imagined I’d experience: both seeing and photographing the northern lights. It was 10 p.m. when I read the charts and realized that if I were under clear skies back home in Minnesota, I’d be able to see an incredible aurora borealis show. Although our workshop would start in just a few hours at 1 a.m., I needed to see if I could capture the lights from Nevada. I drove a few miles from the Atomic Inn and found a small pullout along the highway. The clouds came in quickly as I got the 15-35mm lens onto the Canon R5 and set my exposure to ISO 1600, ƒ/2.8, for 10 seconds. Sure enough, I could pick up the northern lights on my camera’s sensor.
When the group met a few hours later, I suggested we try to capture them from Death Valley. The strength of the storm wasn’t as strong, but I was indeed able to capture a couple of pillars rising up from the horizon.
During the workshop, a highlight for me was getting to experience Death Valley after dark with my husband. Setting up for a Milky Way shot over the salt flats, we both were excited to learn that the glow coming into the frame on the right side was the lights from LA. Our niece was currently going to school there. Drive time is just under five hours away.
Back in northern Minnesota, when the next solar storm hit, I set up two cameras in an attempt to capture the lights dancing all around me.
The fascinating part to me is the constellations are different than most of my aurora images since I was facing south for many of these.
While I have tried many times to capture the aurora in Yellowstone National Park and have gotten a glow more than once, it was on September 18th of this year that I was blown away by the show I witnessed in Hayden Valley. Not only was my camera able to pick up an array of colors, I saw the display with my own eyes!
The beginning of December brought an aurora show that was mostly captured by camera. I could only see a bit of that hot pink on the right side of the image with my eyes. My camera settings collected the rest of the colors on my sensor: ISO 2000, ƒ/2.8, 3.2 seconds.
I follow spaceweather.com for possible aurora activity. It sounds like we are heading into solar max, so the potential to photograph more of this incredible phenomenon looks good!