Saturday night we were able to witness something incredible. An insane aurora action in many places. I am no stranger to northern lights here in Estonia and have captured these many times but this time it was different. Earth got hit by the strongest solar geomagnetic storm of the last 20 years. It was strong enough to disrupt radio waves and cause errors in GPS signals. This also created aurora conditions on a wide scale on Earth. The majority of the time you can only see the lights in the sky in the far north hemisphere or far south hemisphere. This particular storm made northern lights visible in the whole of Europe. There were even reports of sightings in Africa. The same goes for the USA. There were photos of aurora taken in Florida.
I was on a trip with my buddies but I took my camera with me because I knew there was a possibility for northern lights after I got notifications of powerful blasts on the sun that were on a direct path to earth. We don't get full dark nights anymore here and the sky is bright on the horizon the whole night but if the northern lights are strong enough we can still see it. I couldn't have been more right. When it started to get darker outside I regularly took photos of the sky to see if I noticed something. I captured this around 22.45 in the evening, right above our heads.
The sky wasn't even dark but I was already able to see the lights. It was crazy. From there, it only got more insane as the night got darker.
It didn't take long until the whole sky blew up. Everyone was like whaaaaaat this is unreal. As you can see the sun is not even gone and we were able to see this with quite a bright sky.
The following photos are taken right above our heads. It was like a hole, sucking stuff in and these were so many colors. All of this was visible to the naked eye.
We usually see northern lights in the northern sky. Rarely we see anything directly above. This time it didn't mater in what direction you looked. North, east, south, directly above... Northern lights danced everywhere in the sky.
I wish I could have taken a time-lapse of the northern lights but I didn't have a camera battery charger with me on the trip so I didn't want to lose the battery I had left, or else I would not be able to take any more photos.
This is for sure that it was a memorable night. Most likely we won't see any more northern lights this season because the sky won't get dark enough anymore. Doesn't matter, this was a perfect show to close this season.
Did you manage to see the northern lights where you live ?
