On November 11th, there was a massive country-wide geomagnetic event resulting in massive, powerful auroras. Normally I am pretty dialed in to astronomical events, but this took me by surprise. I got a text that there were some massive auroras, and within a few minutes I was in the car to Colbert Park to shoot. I took Shantiv, and Alex, Vanessa, and Zack also showed up.
These were shot with a mirrorless Nikon Z50 at f/3.5 with a 3 second shutter. They were edited in Lightroom.
Picture 1
They were shot facing north towards Champaign. Though Colbert Park was a good, familiar shooting location, if I could go back in time, I'd go somewhere further north so I could avoid shooting through Champaign's light.
To try reducing some of Champaign's light, I applied a linear gradient at the bottom of the image near the horizon and applied some selective edits.
Picture 2
I had the idea too late to try an aurora timelapse, which would have looked epic (and was shot by some members of the UIAS!), but I ran out of time.
Alex, Zack, and Vanessa got a little unlucky: right when they arrived, the aurora temporarily died down and we went home.
Before they arrived, the visual was incredible. We witnessed a massive explosion and got to witness a rare red-dominated aurora. The light columns seemed to be moving around. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. Shantiv states:
"Bro [bleep] this was actually one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in my life"
There was a small chance for some more northern lights on the next day, but we didn't see much and it was very cloudy. It was cool seeing everyone's pictures on Reddit, Discord, Facebook. Everyone, everywhere was invested in this event.