Brockway Mountian Aurora
www.my-spot.com > Astronomy by Frank > Aurora > Brockway Mountain Aurora
No, this is not a sunset! This aurora was captured from the Brockway Mountain Lookout in Michigan's U.P.. This was an approximately 10 minute exposure on Kodak PJ400 with a tripod mounted Minolta SRT-102 and a f/2.8 Sigma 24mm lens stopped to f/4. The actual scene looked pale green to the naked eye but the photo brought out rich yellows, greens, reds, and oranges. The subtle vertical streaks in the photo looked like eerie pale green spikes stretching into the sky. Originally This image was scanned from a 5x7 photo, however I finally rescanned it from the negative using my HP Photosmart S20xi, the photo actually had better color, but this new scan is much cleaner. During the exposure the tripod was not level so the scene was tipped to the right, I corrected this using Picture Window, so the horizon of Lake Superior is now level. The bright star on the right hand side is Capella, the bright star higher on the left hand side is Merak from Ursa Major (The Big Dipper). The aurora is reflecting softly off of Lake Superior, which was about a mile in the distance and a few hundred feet below. The photo was taken from 87° 58' 9" West, 47° 27' 52" North at approximately 1:15 AM EDT on 24 July 1998. I would like to thank Manny and his son Blaize for giving me the enjoyment of showing them many things in the night sky through my telescope. I really enjoyed sharing a great star gazing (and aurora watching) experience with them that night.
Below is the aurora with a skychart grid overlayed. The faint red line shows the actual location of the horizon.
