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March 20, 2021 Auroras
Chippewa National Forest
Tonight was predicted to be a big night. A well-timed corotating interaction region (CIR), ahead of a high speed stream of solar wind, started to interact with Earth's magnetic field in the afternoon, and if the southward Bz continued, it would be quite a show starting right after sunset! However, Bz went north, and by astronautical twilight, there really were no auroras to be seen. The moon was still up, so any dim auroras would be overwhelmed by the moonlight. I decided to stay home unless Bz went back south.
I settled into watching Schitt's Creek on Amazon Prime, and that got me nice and sleepy and no longer thinking about shooting auroras. I started to doze off as I usually do when watching TV after dinner (I seem to be inheriting this trait from my Dad), and after a little bit of this sleepiness, I usually decide to get up and go to bed. This time, I checked Bz again and saw it was starting to go more southward. I stayed up a little bit to monitor its progress. At midnight, the warm bed still looked more tempting than the prospect for auroras, but Bz really dipped south (almost -20 nT), making it a no-brainer decision to head out for an aurora-shooting expedition.
With Bz of -20 nT, there could be auroras directly overhead, but the period of strong northward Bz during the evening made things really quiet initially. It would be probably around 1:00 AM before things would light up, and Bz would need to continue in its southward state. A brief drop to -20 before swinging northward again would not bring a show much above the northern horizon, so I went to a place where I could view the northern horizon and then, if the show continued to get more interesting, I could hop over to another lake where I like to shoot when there is still good ice in the spring because the foreground is really nice. I drove north and got to my first shooting spot. The moon was still up a little bit, and the auroras weren't really there yet.
First image: not much to see.
It had been an hour since Bz went south, so things should be lighting up pretty soon. I checked Bz again, and it was still in the negative teens. It should be a good show. I waited a few more minutes, and expected to see an auroral arc begin to form on the northern horizon. These arcs are usually the initial stage in the show. Instead, a substorm began on the far northern horizon and spread southward. An arc did start to become established (barely), but the substorm action overhwelmed it.
Substorm heads south toward me.
Auroras continue to get brighter.
I had fun comparing this image with another that somebody took in Oxdrift, Ontario.
I am considering running back to the car now and heading to the other lake, but I don't want to miss this show.
Running south back to the car, stopping to shoot every 50-100 yards, this is the last stop before getting back into the car and heading for the other lake.
It was time to head for Orange Lake. Fortunately, a friend of mine had been there during the day and posted pictures on Facebook that convinced me the ice was still safe. When I got there, I found the ice had pulled back a couple feet from the shoreline. The access point faces south, so the ice gets thin there before anywhere else. I saw a bit of thin ice in front of me, and then it looked more solid ahead. I gave it a lot of pokes with my tripod and tried to estimate how deep my boots would sink before I hit solid ice. One hop, a splash with one foot, and the second step... I was on solid ice. I had to go back for the second camera, but I found with time, this ice was actually becoming more solid as radiative cooling during a clear sky night was freezing things back up.
First shot on Orange Lake.
From this point, auroras dimmed a bit, but pulsing sheets of aurora filled the northern sky and overhead.
A fire of auroras always seems to erupt from this island.
Structure reappears to the north.
Not sure why all the reds seem to appear near the island.
Not far from sunrise now, looking northeast.
I shot on Orange Lake until about 6:00 AM. Essentially, the show kept going for the remainder of the night. Given how spring is evolving as I write this, I doubt I'll be able to shoot here any more this spring. I'll look forward to shooting here again
