Photographing the northern lights

Posted at 1:31 PM on September 27, 2011 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Arts

It's cloudy in a great part of Minnesota today, which could deny us the opportunity for one of the most spectacular skyward moments -- the northern lights.

A geomagnetic storm began yesterday when a Coronal Mass Ejection collided with Earth's magnetic field.

Greater Minnesota gets all the bragging rights. With no clouds, and no light pollution -- especially in northern Minnesota -- it's already been a great show. MPR's Updraft blog has a photo from Grand Portage.

Here's a video uploaded from last night's display in Norway:

Northern Lights Timelapse 26.09.2011 Norway from Julius Jahre Sætre on Vimeo.

If you can get a good photograph of the northern lights in this part of the world tonight, we'd love to look at it.

Here's a tutorial on how to photograph them.

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Comments (3)

Nice stuff, Bob. thanks.

Speaking of light in the north, here's a beautiful piece by another Norwegian on Vimeo who you turned us onto a while back.

Posted by Jim Shapiro | September 27, 2011 2:25 PM

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Amazing what a camera captures and thank you for the "how to" capture tutorial.

Posted by Sue | September 27, 2011 4:28 PM

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The northern lights were seen last night as far south as Michigan, New York, South Dakota and Maine in the United States, and also from Europe and New Zealand. It was the strongest geomagnetic storm since October 2003.
A HD video of what the northern lights look like during a strong geomagnetic storm as we had yesterday can be seen at http://www.vimeo.com/27315234

Posted by Ford Queyras | September 27, 2011 4:32 PM

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