Sky Fire

Late Fall and Winter in the vast frozen wasteland I call home, has many photo ops. There is the opportunity to photograph snow, and maybe snow ice, and maybe so more snow! But often winter means Sky Fire, or the Aurora borealis. We are in a bit of a peak in solar activity right now, and these solar flares cause solar winds that set the Van Allen belt into celestial fireworks.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="397" caption="Looking North"][/caption]

Here in a 30 second exposure @ f:4 with my SMC DA-Pentax 14mm f:2.8 we have an arc of the Aurora framing the Little Dipper.

Here with the same exposure, same lens we see Orion in the green and magenta sky.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="403" caption="Pentax *istD smc DA-Pentax 14mm f:2.8 lens, 30 seconds f:4"][/caption]

At times the display was so bright that we could see our camera controls, often as bright as the full moon on this moonless night.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="392" caption="The road north."][/caption]

Here we can see the closed Gatineau Park Road at Cantley, Quebec which we used as our shooting platform. Larger versions can be seen on my website.

Darrell

© Darrell Larose, Ottawa, Canada and darrelllarose.wordpress.com and darrelllarose.ca, © 2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. All materials are protected under Canadian Law, The Berne Convention,  and the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act)