Aurora Alert Oct 10-11, 2024

[Andy Wehrle]

I did end up going out Thursday night. Missed the bigger 9PM CDT substorm, like @JamesCaruso because my wife and I also had another event that evening which we did not get out of until after 9. However after driving around for 45 minutes looking for a spot in rural western Dane County that actually had somewhat of a view of the northern sky (not blocked by a tree-lined ridge) and waiting around while nothing much seemed to be happening, eventually a faint glow appeared in the northern sky and gradually brightened; ended up capturing these during the 11PM hour:



Also, according to the info below my avatar, Thursday was my 20th anniversary as a member of Stormtrack! I joined when I was 18!

 

[Daniel Reese]

Here are a few of my pics from Thursday night's show in northeast Kansas. The first one is from at work in Topeka around 9:15, while the other two are from the old Buck Creek School north of Lawrence around 11:40. Overall it was as much as I could have possibly hoped for in Kansas. The May 10 event may have been slightly brighter, but cloud cover wasn't an issue this time and I had a much better plan in place to capture it. The red/pink colors were easily visible to the naked eye during the brighter substorms.

 

[Drew Terril]

I've not had an opportunity to go through any of my pics yet. Saw one of the early substorms at my GF's dad's house before I had to head home. Then, after I got home, the next substorm ramped up, and I was able to see it with the naked eye even in town. I'm not far from downtown, and I never would have thought it would be visible at my house.

 

[William Monfredo]

You don't have to memorize this NWS chart , but if you've ever wondered where those varied, auroral colors come from, this chart shows you.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

I remembered what it was like to be a noob trying to chase a high risk day in Oklahoma. Was in West Michigan the 10th and tried to find a place to see the lights. Lots of people out trying to do the same.

Apparently public land closes at 10pm in Michigan and the gestapo was kicking people out of state park parking lots right at 10 sharp. Ended up on the lakeshore of Lake Michigan in Muskegon with 100s of my closest skywatcher friends lining both sides of the road taking cell phone pics while traffic tried to get by. It was a disaster.

Anyway, got a couple pics, but these were much less impressive than the May 10 event. Perhaps it was location (NE/SD vs MI) but I left frustrated. I also had to cut the night short as I had obligations Friday morning.

 

[William Monfredo]

One more photo that has some decent stars and a bit of shimmer. Now, I'm waiting for the next big show to practice on, to give it another go.

 

[Brett Roberts]

Given the favorable CME two nights prior, I gambled on driving all the way from Oklahoma to Iowa for this event. It looked hairy during the day Thursday, since STEREO-A was recording mainly +Bz values in what appeared to be the CME core. But I pressed on anyway, and a couple hours before dark, data at DISCOVR (a satellite just upstream from Earth) revealed that we would be seeing extremely favorable -Bz values in the core.

I made it just past Story City on I-35 (~42°N) by dusk, found a decent spot on the dirt grid, and camped out there for the entire night. It was amazing how closely the substorm evolution mirrored the May 10 CME. In both cases, the best substorm happened early enough to maximize views on the east coast, leaving those of us in the central U.S. cursing the remaining twilight... and also in both cases, the moon was still pretty high in the sky in the evening, which comromised contrast for the best substorm. For this event, the second and third substorms were around 11:30pm and 2:30am CDT. Both were very impressive, but much like the overnight substorms on May 10-11, they consisted primarily of pillars to my north rather than the overhead/360° action at dusk.

The most noteworthy part of watching this event in-person was the period from about 1:30am onward, when I began to notice extraordinarily fast upward "pulses" in the greens to my north. These pulses would take less than 1 second to travel from the bottom to the top of green pillars and other features. I was taken aback by how much faster this "motion" appeared than the more typical lateral dancing/wiggling of pillars. Although the aurora was not exceptionally bright as this happened, it was probably the most stunning thing I've seen with my eyes thus far from my very limited viewing of the lights (all at mid-latitudes). Because of their speed, these pulses were impossible to capture in any kind of video or timelapse in such low-light conditions, where exposures of at least several seconds are needed.

Here's a collection of various timelapses I got with my 14-24mm lens:

And a few stills:

 

[Andy Wehrle]

Finally uploaded my video timelapse from this event; nowhere near as spectacular as @Brett Roberts and others but it's a start. Like my photos, this would be from the ~11:30 PM CDT substorm.

Brett, it sounds like you actually shot yours frame-by-frame with long expsoures; as opposed to just rolling tripoded video like I did?