Northern Lights Display Visible in New Jersey
On Wednesday, Sunspot AR3848 sent a powerful solar flare directly toward earth. Based on the intensity and length of the coronal mass ejections (CME), NOAA and NASA forecasted that it could cause a severe G-4 class geomagnetic storm, with the possibility of auroras being visible further south than usual. The CME arrived on Thursday generating multiple alerts.
I went outside a little after 7 PM to possibly set up a camera to capture the Northern Lights. I don’t have a good view of the horizon to the north and hoped to see something above the trees. I wasn’t expecting anything this early as it was just dark out. To my amazement the sky looking north was bright red, and when I looked to the east and then south saw the typical aurora green. The display was everywhere, even straight up. It was much brighter than I expected, easily visible to the eye, not just with a digital camera. I wasn’t sure which direction to point the camera. I ended up setting up several cameras with wide angle lenses pointing different directions, including one with a fisheye lens with a 180° view pointing straight up. Each camera was set to take images every 30 seconds (30 second exposure, f/8, ISO 1600). Even though I missed some of the initial brightest display, I left the cameras out for several more hours. They did come back several times. I used the images to create the following time lapse videos.
View Looking North
View Looking East
View Looking Up
View Looking NorthWest
View Looking North
View Looking North
View Looking NorthEast
Individual Images
