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March 29, 2017 Auroras

Leech Lake

I made a trip to Park Rapids to give a talk about auroras and storm chasing.  Earth was still under the influence of a high speed solar wind stream, so I thought the chances of auroras would be pretty good.  The wayside rest at Whipholt provided a wide-open, expansive view over the large lake and a chance to see auroras all the way to the far northern horizon.  Since my talk ended at 2:30, I needed to kill some time.  A daylight to auroras time lapse could do just that.  I arrived at the lake, took a few stills, then set up a tripod and shot for the time lapse. I did not have a working intervalometer with me (the bluetooth one that I had had a dead battery).  I decided to count manually.  Anybody who has ever done a time lapse knows that that can be quite mundane and repetitive.  I tried to hookup my laptop and auto ramping software about halfway through, but I had never practiced doing that with just the USB cable, and it did not go well.  Anyway, once it got dark enough, I could just do exposures that matched my desired shot interval, and I could take a break and let the camera do the work.

Additionally, some high clouds moved in, which would probably make it more difficult to see the northern lights, but they weren't too thick, and as expected, the lights came out right as the moment it got dark enough to see them.  After about 30 minutes of further shooting, I packed up and headed for home.

Nice Auroras
Ice shoves on Leech Lake.
Nice Auroras
First auroras to my northeast and fading twilight to the northwest along with city lights of Cass Lake and Bemidji.
Nice Auroras
A cropped picture showing the auroras to the north-northeast.

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