Back in May of this year, I saw something I had never seen before: the
aurora borealis gracing the night sky over the prairie of the Sierra Nevada foothills. It was an astounding once-in-a-life event. Except it wasn't. The sun has been particularly active this year, and a coronal mass ejection occurred a few days ago that sent charged particles racing towards the Earth. For the second time in my life, I saw the aurora borealis from my home area.
I was teaching an online geology lab and happened across a report that auroras were being sighted in unusual places, and anxiously awaited for my students to finish their work. I checked out my front door and took a shot of the sky in the heavily light-polluted environment, and my phone camera caught the characteristic magenta-pink light. I talked Mrs. Geotripper into taking a late-night drive to the prairie-lands near Willms Road outside of Knight's Ferry on the Stanislaus River.
The lights were immediately evident in my phone camera pictures. They were very dim to the naked eye, but the night shot setting on my phone captured the detailed spires and structures in the lights quite well.
The intensity, color, and pattern of the light changed from moment to moment. It was a nice way to spend an evening!
The lights faded after about an hour and we went home. I hope you got a chance to see them, but if you didn't, please enjoy what we got to see!
The lights were not better or worse than those of last May. They were just different. It was a privilege to be able to view this gift of the cosmos.
