11 October 2024

We usually don’t see the aurora borealis as far south as Pittsburgh but this year has been amazing. Last night was its third visit and perhaps the best.

Having missed the other two events I went to Schenley Park golf course last night from 8:30 to 9:00pm. Knowing it would only be visible in cellphone photos I took a lot of pictures. Obviously there is too much light pollution! You can count the stars on one hand in my photo. But the sky is pink.

Steve Gosser went to Allegheny County’s North Park and waited a long time for the aurora to become intense. At 10:15pm he captured the red and green photo at top. Wow!

Dave Brooke went further afield to Armstrong County and waited past midnight. He captured this still photo and …

… this timelapse video.

Double wow!!

A good view of the northern lights comes down to location and patience … and a good camera.

p.s. Dave described his timelapse process in the video description, copied below:

October 11th 2024 saw a G4 Geomagnetic storm with a Kp:8. This timelapse was taken in Armstrong Co in Western PA starting around 9:30pm. It consists of 193, 10 second exposures with an interval of 5 seconds between each shot. They were taken with a Canon R5 and a Sigma 14-24mm Art lens at 14mm. The aperture was 2.8 and ISO 800. The sequence was rendered in LRTimelapse and outputted at 1/2 speed.

— Description of video by Dave Brooke