April 23-24, 2023 G4 Geogmagnetic Storm/Significant Aurora Event

[Ethan Schisler]

I managed to document the significant Aurora Borealis event that impacted much of the Central and Southern US late last night. Here are some stills and a bit of video I shot with my Sony A7SIII. I have about 2100 frames and quite a bit of 4K high speed video to go through from this crazy event. The best northern lights display I've seen hands down out of the 8 or so times I've documented them here over the last 15 years. All of these were taken near Good Hope, IL about an hour and a half south of the Quad Cities.









I've got a ton more to edit, these are just a few stills I pulled off of my 4k video that I shot. Here is the link so you can watch the video, I haven't uploaded the 4k version yet as I'm still working on it. I put the HD version online though for viewing!

VIDEO:

I'm sure others have experiences to share as well, so I figured I would get a thread going!

 

[JamesCaruso]

Great photograpby Ethan! Did it look that good with the naked eye, or did it require the camera to make it that brilliant?

 

[James K]

That's really cool. beautiful pic's. I'll jump on YouTube & watch the vid later.

I did go out a few times & tried looking, but saw nothing.. (I'll chock that up to the fact I'm looking over a major city in that direction, and it was partly cloudy)
Looking north even on a clear night its just a blank dull-blue-gray-ish sky for me. Like all those stars you see...there are none of those here. .lol.

 

[Ethan Schisler]

Great photograpby Ethan! Did it look that good with the naked eye, or did it require the camera to make it that brilliant?

Thanks guys!! Surprisingly it was actually pretty visible to the naked eye. However I will say to the naked eye the pillars had more of a strong "gray" appearance to them (very erie looking). I'm actually not sure if this is normal or not, every display I've seen here was never this strong or filled the entire sky and I've never had the chance to view them from higher altitudes (aka Alaska or Canada).

There were at times visible greens and reds as shown on my video toward the height of the show around 11:30 to Midnight (that is real time video), however it looked to me like an ominous bank of fog taking over the landscape that was rapidly pulsing at speeds that I could not comprehend with my eyes or mind. I've never ever seen this happen with the previous 7 or 8 events I've documented over the last 15 years or so (the pulsating rapidly).

I'm not sure if that helps to describe it or not lol. It was a hard to explain type of experience. I ended up giving up the photos and just turning to high speed video as I couldn't capture the motion. I would say to answer your question, the camera definitely helped for sure in this case, but they were visible quite well to the naked eye, just I think the colors were a bit washed out. It probably would have been better if I was in total darkness too. I would say to get the most out of seeing them, a DSLR camera is a must . I hope that helps!

On an unrelated note, ignore my sniffly nose in the video. It was 26 degrees at the time and I had been out there for about 3 hours at that point . My settings for the video were around 1/30 of a second shutter speed, ISO 20,000, F/1.4 on a Sony A7SIII. Anything slower and I just could not capture the rapid pulsing. Toward the end I was just hand holding the camera to pan around.

 

[JeremyS]

Just came across this thread so I’ll share my experience and photos.
I am relatively new to northern lights chasing so to speak. I’ve only gone out to try to see them three or four times in the last couple of years. I had one great experience and a couple so-so experiences.
I was following everything online leading up to this day, so I was pretty excited to get out and see what was going to be visible this far south near Omaha. My usual spot is to go into Western Iowa where it is the darkest in my area. I went east of Little Sioux, Iowa, and once out in the country, I could see the faint green glow to the north and the faint outline of pillars. I stopped and took some pictures there and then continued going north a bit further thinking it could only help.
I could see the faint colors and pillars with my naked eye still at one point, and stopped on the side of the road. It was about this exact time where the storm went crazy and I could see the colors and dancing lights with my naked eye almost overhead. They were a bit faint, but still visible to the naked eye. I took a couple videos but they’re too big to attach here.

 

[Jeff Wright]

“STEVE” off to the left, correct?

 

[Brian R.]

That is beautiful. awesome job!!!!