Here in Virginia, my exposure to northern lights has been rare—very few and far between. The first time we saw them, there was a huge red glow in the north. It flared up above a ridge—the appearance was that of a large forest fire, and not all that far away.
Soon the phones were lighting up in the 9-1-1 center as reports of forest fires began to come in. A piece of fire equipment—probably a brush truck—went all the way to Reddish Knob to have a look. I recall the firemen saying they sat up there and watched the display.
That has been a long time ago—probably the Great Aurora of 2000. Since then we have seen auroras briefly just a few times.
This year we had the superstorm in May. Since then we have had auroras visible from our home in Virginia multiple times. However, usually we did not learn about them in time to enjoy them. Once I even was doing an astronomy night with a church group, only to learn the aurora had been visible and I missed noticing it.
Last week, this changed. I was aware that several large X-class CMEs were headed our way. Saturday night was supposed to be the best night, according to a NOAA forecast. Previously it had been predicted for Sunday night, but that got pulled forward a night.
But Saturday night was a dud, as far as auroras go. We did capture a fireball in one of our photos.
Sunday night we did briefly, super faintly, see a touch of an aurora. Photography picked it up with more clarity, as it put on a show above a distant thunderstorm a hundred plus miles away.
But then came Monday night. It began when Shaphan called to say the numbers were better for an aurora that night than they had been the previous night.
Adrian and I finished getting a telescope on the Iris Nebula and started the camera running.
Back at the house, we kept tabs on the thirty-minute aurora forecast, watching it beginning to swell with intensity, while making preparations to leave.
No sooner had we arrived at the home of friends in “darkville” and gotten out on their hilltop, than the aurora was already beginning to show on the northern horizon.
Cheryl, Adrian, and I each set up a camera on the north star and began capturing photos that we could later stack into a star-trail photograph. Our goals were several. For one, it would be fun to have a star trail photo in the context of an aurora display.
Secondly, we can set our cameras to take star trail photos even after we have left. By doing this, we would potentially capture auroras later in the night should they flare up again after we were gone.
To capture photos for star trails, we placed our cameras on tripods and set them to manual settings. For the ISO I chose 1000. The lens f/stop was wide open—for my lens that was f/2.8. I used a locking electronic cable release to fire the camera. The exposure was set for thirty seconds. As soon as an exposure finished, the motor drive would begin the next photograph. The locked cable would immediately trigger the next exposure. In this way, we could shoot for hours without ever touching the camera.
We set up just inside a greenhouse and shot out through a wide-open door. Our goal was to keep dew from building up on our equipment as we shot until the batteries died hours later.
The white pillars and the dancing pink and red blushes were exciting to us to see. Photography brought out the colors more vividly.
Imagine my surprise and delight the next morning when I looked at the photos captured and discovered the aurora had fired back up several hours after we had left. The second wave occurred shortly after 1:00 a.m. Apparently it put on a display that should have made the first effort blush. The photos captured of it were larger and brighter than the photos captured at 9:30 or 10:00.
Capturing the data was the first step, and obviously the most important. Secondarily, dark frames were taken at the same temperature and for the same 30-second exposures. Depending on the method used for stacking the photos, the dark calibration frames are valuable for taking the noise out of the photos.
There are many ways to stack star trails. I’m no pro. In fact, stacking the star trails for these aurora series is the first time I recall doing that with photos I’ve taken. I remember one time we stacked star trails for a series Darren had taken. But that was years ago, and I don’t recall what method we used to stack those photos.
The way I chose to stack these is very likely not the best way, but it was relatively simple.
First, I opened the photos in Lightroom and edited them to my satisfaction. I then exported them as layers into Photoshop to finish my processing there.
In Photoshop, I selected all the layers, and, in one motion, changed the layer property from “normal” to “lighten.” This brought the light portions of each photograph to the top…and just like that the stars became streaks. That was fast!
I turned off all the layers except for the bottom one. On that layer I cleaned up any jet streaks. One by one, I clicked on the next layer above the last. If jet streaks needed to be removed, I used a layer mask, and, with a tiny brush, painted out the streak.
The end result was a composite photograph with the jet streaks removed. It did, however, have some interruptions to the star streaks that were not the most desirable to a critical eye. I’m guessing there are other processes that would take care of jet streaks without this work. But, it was one way, and it was relatively easy to do.
Last night we were farther away from the flyway into Dulles International Airport, and the jet streaks were largely not an issue. The end result was much cleaner. In fact, I did not take even one jet streak out of the forty-three photos used to make up the front cover shot.
