Chasing the Aurora

RED ALERT! my email read - 90% chance of viewing Aurora activity due to increased sunspot activity August 1st .  A glance at the sky didn't hold much promise at 7pm as it was raining again.  I quickly checked the Environment Canada forecast and there was hope of clearing later in the evening.


11PM rolled around and the stars were peaking around cloud with some promise.  I quickly loaded my gear into the car, stopped by Timmies for a hot one to-go, and headed off to the dark sky preserve of Elk Island National Park east of Edmonton. 

The cloud cover was now only patchy as I set up my tripod and camera in the dark.  As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I spotted the big dipper with a foreground of spruce trees but no sign of the northern lights yet.  I tried a few different settings and shot several exposures while I fine tuned my manual focus before finally setting the camera to BULB for some exposures over 30 seconds using lower ISOs for less noise. This image was shot at ISO 800, for 30 sec, aperture 3.5 and overexposed by 1 2/3 stops.  

I shot a several more starscapes and played with the half moon rising through some more spruce boughs until the moon started to light the fine, high cloud reducing visibility again. I finally abandoned my search - for now.  Another night I will receive a warning and return to catch the dancing lights of the Aurora with a little more experience to assist me.

Current Aurora activity can be monitored and you can subscribe to receive email alerts when there is a high probability to sight the aurora at
http://corona-gw.phys.ualberta.ca/AuroraWatch/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/.