It happened!! It finally happened!! Hubby and I experienced our first overhead Aurora Borealis and it was positively magical!
It all started on March 23rd when I was watching the KP numbers. Around 6:45pm, I saw that they were at 6 and projected to reach 7 (Found out later that they reached 8 I think!!). I sent hubby a message and said, “Shall we head north” and he said YES! So we packed everything up and jumped in the car and all three of us (Spice came too!) headed north.
Sunset wasn’t until 7:30pm and we kept driving up to Mille Lacs area. It was kinda hazy so we kept going around Mille Lacs till we ended up on the north side of the lake and kept moving further north. Once we realized we could actually see it with our eyes, we found the first dirt road and pulled over. The sky was pulsing, vibrating, I knew the auroras danced, but I didn’t know they pulsed and had almost a heart beat.
Even with Google Timeline and maps, I can’t figure out where we were. “Bob’s Road” as they say in Twister. There apparently wasn’t enough signal to figure out exact locations. It was somewhere north of Aitkin, that much I can figure out. It’s possible that it was 390th street off of Highway 169 but again, I am not certain and will likely never know for sure.
Naturally, there was electrical lines but the images weren’t too bad.
This edit is my favorite.
It took many many many attempts to get the auroras anywhere near how I wanted them to look.
Still, I go back and wonder “can I make it better?” I probably will for a long time, until I get the hang of it.
I do like some of the results
Here is the pre image followed by some post processing of the same image that I liked the best.
And some other images taken that night
We finally left about 1am and got home around 2-3am. Even once we were home, I could still see the pulsing of the auroras across the sky right from our bedroom. What a magical night.