February 2, 2015 Auroras
Wabana Lake
A southern hemisphere (on the sun) coronal hole opened up and allowed a high speed stream of solar wind to escape and affect Earth with a southward-poining magnetic field. The timing of the sun's rotation with this feature has been bringing it around the Earth side of the sun at the same time we get a full moon. This makes aurora photography a bit more challenging in terms of getting the auroras to stand out from the rest of the sky. There are two things that make it worse during the winter. First, the moon is higher in the sky (opposite the sun, which is higher in the sky during the summer), making it brighter. The other factor is the snow cover, which reflects light, making the scenery a lot brighter. However, the air is a lot drier and clearer in the winter. There are no forest fires that typically obscure the auroras in the summer with their smoke. The moon also provides lighting for foregrounds.
I tried Wabana Lake for some tree foregrounds this evening. The auroras did brighten up a bit to compete with the moon for a while, but they were no more than 10 degrees off the northern horizon.
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| The auroras start to brighten up a bit, but still not a whole lot of structure. |
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| A little structure now. |
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| The auroral arc. |
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| Wedge tornado! |
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| Blocks of ice from fishing activites and a much dimmer auroral oval. |