Yukon Sights by Sue Thomas

Northern Lights in the morning 

4 January 2015 - Sunday

Took the dogs out for their morning pee...WHOA! The northern lights were out.
It was also -35C. Even so, I rushed back inside to dress warmly and get my camera!

First shot was at 7:35 a.m. and I wrapped up at 8:30 a.m.

The lights were a soft green to my eye. Again, my Canon 7D with the Canon 10-22mm lens captured colour I did not see. This is 8 seconds of exposure at f/4. I started at ISO-1600 but changed to ISO-1250 because the sky was so bright due to the almost full moon and then the sun starting to make its way up to the east.

Full moon and aurora
The almost-full moon is about to set on the left

Northern Lights over the cabin with the moon
Looking north, with the nearly full moon setting to the left

The next shot amazed me when I saw it on the computer monitor. I saw only soft greens in the sky so the magenta and orange and blues were a surprise!

Many colours in the northern lights
The amount of colour was absurd!

Northern lights spread
Almost a black hole?

northern lights in colour
Can't help but think of Hawaii when I look at this one

The nearly full moon was shedding so much light that the aurora were softened.
After the moon went down, the intensity improved.

Noerthern Lights and the Big Dipper
A slice of the lights with the Big Dipper!

Northern lights to the west
After the moon went down the colour intensified, looking northwest

The Big Dipper appeared in my shots to the northwest. Usually I have the camera just pointed up and am not paying attention to the constellations or the angle of the camera because I'm hoping to capture most of the lights, which were moving fast this morning...

As well, there was an active meteor show this day and one of them photobombed some of my shots!

Taking flight!
An eagle taking flight? With the Big Dipper again and a meteor also snuck into this shot

Northern lights - aurora
A final streak to finish the morning - this was at 8:01 a.m. looking to the east

This isn't the first time my camera impressed it me, it continued to do the job for almost an hour at -35C although my fingers started to burn so I was glad to go back inside!

Previous page - 2 January 2015
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