June 27, 2022 Auroras 

Grand Rapids, MN

A high speed solar wind stream affected Earth (speeds of 600 km/s), and the auroras came out. They overperformed given Bz was generally between -5 nT and 0 nT. Given the temporal proximity to the summer solstice, I did not head out until 11:00 PM. I arrived at Prairie Lake and saw mostly twilight on the northern horizon, but I suspected there was a band of aurora. I took a picture, which confirmed that, indeed, there was. I thought I would take a few more pictures, there might be some structure, and then I would go home. No substorm appeared to be in the works.

A series of colorful substorms struck over the next couple hours. I was quite pleased with the first one, but they kept getting better. As so often seems to be the case when I am at a public boat landing (especially here at Prairie Lake), people show up in their cars at the same time the auroras are becoming active. This time was no exception, and there were three cars.

They passed by pretty quickly, so my photography of the first substorm was not ruined. The first was more of a false alarm because things settled down again, back to the steady, green auroral oval. However, a more legitimate substorm followed, and bright, magenta colums filled the sky. This second substorm slowly calmed down, and the people who were hanging out at the dam departed.

I then set up my camera on the dock and started a time lapse of the pulsating blob aurora show that often follows a substorm. Tonight's display followed the typical sequence until I saw columns, once again, emerging from the field of slowly (on time scales of about 5 seconds) pulsating auroras. This third substorm was just as bright as the previous one, and I continued to take pictures.

Eventually, this third substorm faded, and I packed up and left, but not before taking a few pictures of the dimming auroras. For my last shot, I pointed my camera north-northwest and happened to catch a meteor, so I saved that image. I took over 600 images total.

This is the first image I took when I arrived.

The first brightening of the auroras.

The second substorm starts.

The peak of the second substorm.

The auroras in their slowly-pulsating blobular phase.

A third brightening of the auroras occurred when I did not expect it.

This is the last image I took. A meteor photobombed the auroras.

A shot with my 16-35mm lens (at 16mm) during the second substorm.

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