Oh, What a Night - The Great Aurora of 11th May 2024
June 3, 2024
I have long been an aurora chaser but living in Sydney the pickings are slim when it comes to dark skies and low light pollution. Usually, I am filled with frustration and longing when the skies dance with colour southwards to the poles.
In fact, it was an aurora that started my photographic journey. In 2015 I was doing a work locum in Hobart when I started to make comparisons between the quality of my iPhone pics nd Tims’ Nikon D90 and his f/1.4 lens during a trip to Italy. The penny was dropping that I needed to buy a ‘real’ camera and a work colleague suggested that the new mirrorless technology was smaller to hold than a Nikon. I still had the words of my photographer sister ringing in my ears when she said ‘don’t scrimp on a quality lens’ – so off I went and bought the Sony A7 and the Sony F4 16-35mm lens on a Saturday morning.
I had no idea how any of the controls worked and literally copied settings that were being suggested from the Aurora Australis FB page. In retrospect, shooting in full manual the first day I owned a camera was a brave choice. The page was abuzz with chatter of clear skies and strong aurora, so I borrowed my cousin’s tripod and set off to Goats Bluff – a popular south facing view outside of Hobart. I set the camera, stood back from the hordes of confident looking photographers and pretended I knew what I was doing. With camera settings that I had cut and pasted as suggestions, I pressed the shutter release button and… and… and…. KABOOM! In that moment my passion for photography was ignited. My LCD screen had lit up with a multitude of watermelon colours - green, reds, orange, the phenomenon ‘Steve’ and a row of ‘Tiger Tails’ as well as Milky Way. I think I may have yelled out loud in excitement. My effort to focus on the stars of course was fairly rubbish but I look back on those photos very fondly - if I could create that, when what else could my camera do. I was completely and utterly hooked.
The aurora is one manifestation of geomagnetic activity or storms and with an ongoing fascination I continued to chase it for some years - trips to Iceland, Norway, the Isle of Skye and of course NZ saw me download every possible alert app and pour over locations and warnings. I’ve captured some pretty nice auroras over the years, my preference being to keep the spectacle clear and clean without creating too many foreground options.
In November 2023 we were passing through Hobart for 1 night and the Glendale App was forecasting a strong auroral substorm. Thick clouded skies at bedtime left me bitterly disappointed, but a check out the windows at 3am revealed beams to the naked eye, so I flung layers over my pjs and rushed out the hotel door much to the bemusement of the night doorman who, I think thought I was a ‘lady of the night’. “The aurora’s on” I excitedly yelled at him. It certainly was - labelled as a G2 (moderate) storm, my Sony A1 sang on Taroona beach, however not even my Sony 14mm prime on portrait mode was wide enough to capture some huge skyward beams. I left very satisfied with the magic I’d seen. That night however was a portent for what astronomers call a ‘solar max year’ - a season when the aurora is extremely active before it settles for around a decade for just mediocre showings.
Because it was an especially active year, I had had a loose plan in my mind that if all the stars aligned, I might just make a dash to Hobart on a whim. I needed a strong forecast and clear skies in either Hobart or Launceston. Tassie had had some good aurora in recent months but none that I felt sick in the stomach for missing out on, and none that I could get away for. So, when in the week before the 11th May the sun had 9 CME’s (coronal mass ejections) in the space of a day (instead of 1 every few days) and the magnetic storms were lining up nicely for these filaments to hit earth directly - there was a growing electricity within the aurora chasers community that a special event was in the wind. All pertinent information was gleaned from the Glendale app - a live data page created by Scotsman Andy Stables- giving accurate and timely information. Predicting if the solar winds increased in speed and aligned with the subatomic particles streaming away from the sun in the form of filaments, they would then dump into earth’s atmosphere as aurora substorms on the night of Saturday 11th May AEST with a smaller showing earlier on the Friday. No-one knew how many substorms we would get from all the CME’s. Also, aurora is regularly +/- 10hrs in arrival accuracy and best information is only gained an hour or so before hand so there’s a huge degree of luck in being able to see one as arrival can often coincide with daylight hours.
Friday night arrived and whilst the Australian mainland was suffering in rainy, cloudy misery, aurora chasers were buzzing all over Tasmania. I woke up to seeing some beautiful pictures on the FB page and my brain started churning. Consulting the BOM satellite page I saw most of Hobart surrounds were free of cloud for the next 24 hrs. Was this the day my tricky plan came to fruition? There was just one problem - well, two really - not only were my kids holding a Mother’s Day brunch for me, but it was also Tim’s birthday celebrations! Hahaha, oh dear…. for just a millisecond I was conflicted. By 10am the Glendale app was showing pictures from the other side of the world and data that the sub storms were growing stronger and by 11am I knew it was either commit or commiserate. So, I boldly announced to my family - “I’m sorry Gang, Mother’s Day is cancelled, give the love to Dad - I’m on the 3pm plane to Hobart!”
Once committed, I was very firm about what I wanted to achieve. Specifically I didn’t invite anyone to join me - this was a night for spontaneity and for ignoring rational decision making to do with cold, hunger and sleep. Did I wish I had my family and friends with me when I was there? Oh yes, but I had to make do with sharing the yelling and joy with the communities around me. I packed just one lens and 2 bodies, accessories and a sleeping bag for the car. I wanted to immerse myself entirely into the space and have my heart absorb it as much as the camera did without distractions.
Stopping through Melbourne briefly I posted on the Aurora Australis FB page about ditching my family commitments and how mildly guilty I felt about doing so. I also messaged a friend who was at Lake Tyrrell in Victoria - free of cloud. ‘It’s going to be huge” I said. “I’ve just come back in from sunset and am exhausted’ she replied. “Get back out there!” I unsympathetically laughed back at her. Stepping out of the plane in Hobart right on sunset, I dashed to the rental car with a plan to drive around to the Tessellated pavement - a 50 min drive. On my phone the Glendale app was ‘pinging’ with alerts. Forecast as a ‘Strong’ or G3 storm the alerts changed from G3 to G4 or ‘Severe’ within a few minutes. Being Tasmanian bred but NSW raised, I had spent every year of my life visiting my grandparents or just exploring with my family, so I’ve been there probably over 50 times - helpful in knowing how to navigate the nighttime adventures. However, by the time dusk had fallen I could literally see aurora beams with the naked eye reaching up into the skies. Aurora can be very fickle - the magic can last hours or mere minutes so there’s never time for indecision, so I altered plans and instead drove 5 minutes away to 7 Mile Beach at the end of airport runway.
Squishing into a full beach carpark I could feel the energy from a beach teeming with people in the dark. The first pictures came through and I exuded a deep ‘Whoa’ - the intensity of colour and size of the beams were astounding. I snapped off a few more shots - and chatted to the people around me. Looking at the sky again I thought ‘That’s weird - I can see beams in the east’ (Aurora Australis is, was, found purely south facing. ) I had plans of capturing the Milky Way on the eastern edge with the aurora but quickly realised this was being obliterated by the sheer strength of the auroral light. Looking to the west I could again see beams and a strange group of shimmering white spots halfway into the sky. I shot off a 10 second pic and the white spots were now all long lines. After the fact, I realised I had also photographed the Starlink Satellite train passing overhead - that was a bonus! This is crazy I thought - how strong is this night going to be? I thought if I captured nothing else on this night it still would have been worth the adventure. Later inspection of pictures from this beach revealed I had also captured some auroral ‘dunes’- that is, where gravity lines meet as the Aurora passes through each band of the magnetic ionosphere.
I stayed for an hour and decided to continue with my plan to head around to Eaglehawk Neck - detouring past my grandfather’s old fishing shack on the water at Lewisham to take a sentimental shot. Lewisham faces due south across a large body of water with Kunyani, or Mt Wellington in the background. At this point I had swirling waves of green and soft reds, so I knew the aurora had settled down a bit. The time was right to continue I thought. However, within a minute of being in the car my aurora alert pinged again but this time it was different - I could see the sky glowing reds and yellows whilst driving. The sky was swirling in front of me, so I abandoned all plans of making it to the Tessellated pavement and instead stopped into Park Beach near Dodges Ferry. (I wasn’t so unhappy about that because the wildlife on Tassie’s night roads can be dangerous to navigate.)
Park Beach had a long tidal sand flat so I spent time using the ripples in the tidal flow to absorb the colours - running in and out when my gumboots (my only shoes!) were in danger of overfilling. It was now about 11pm. The sky was a full 180 degrees in colour so trying to capture portrait panos were challenging as aurora is not static - it moves continuously pulsating in waves and was right up into the zenith - diabolical for stitching together authentically in post production.
And then, from my pocket another ‘PING’. The substorm had risen to G5 - Extreme!
The entire sky was within seconds exploding with reds, yellows, greens and oranges and swirling and dancing and as bright as day. Turning around to see where it stopped, I realised that it didn’t - 360 degrees of colour was seen while I spun on the spot. In that moment I looked up…. a moment that will stay etched into my happy brain forever. Up in the zenith of the sky was a pulsing, rippling and shimmering hippy tie-dyed display of pure energy. This was the aurora’s corona - a latin word that translates into ‘crown’. A crown indeed.
All of my previous astro settings needed re-thinking - Bright sky, moving object, saturated colours, dark foreground - how to shoot without blowing out the highlights whilst keeping some structure of the dancing pulsations? I adjusted the angle of the A1 straight up toward the sky, directly overhead. Have you ever tried to take a photo in the dark, in the freezing cold, directly overhead, using a tripod and ballhead? Your knees bend, your back flexes, arching, contorting your body into the most impossible of postures, and yet still you can’t see through the viewfinder. How to compose? Will I frame? Or Just shoot? I kneel on the freezing sand thankful for my water-resistant adventure pants knowing this spectacle could be gone within seconds, knowing not to waste a precious moment. I alternately shoot, review, yell and cry. I laugh with strangers, and we bond over our foresight to be out of our warm enclaves witnessing this display of pure celestial energy.
Around 1am and 4 degrees with fog and cloud rolling across the horizon I retreated to some very uncomfortable car camping - the upside being that although I barely slept, I could fire off a pic or two occasionally as the aurora continued in a moderate fashion until dawn. Knowing there was excellent coffee opening early nearby to keep me going, I excitedly posted a few pics through to my family and friends and onto FB. I think my last pictures taken were at 4am but by then Great Aurora was over.
By 6am messages were pouring in “Why didn’t you take me?”, “I thought about jumping on a plane too and am now feeling sick I didn’t”, “Will you do an interview with ABC radio this morning?”. I was a little bemused by the last one but checking FB discovered my adventure to jump on a plane posthaste had taken on a life of its own. People everywhere stuck in mediocre weather were living vicariously through my story. My friend in Lake Tyrell had acted upon my info and captured the most glorious pictures from northern Victoria - she got the Milky Way in! Tim was sharing my pics to everyone - he at last realised I was not on a harebrained chase and he had also ventured out to capture a tiny red glimmer through a 2 sec break in the clouds in light polluted rainy Sydney. Social media was abuzz with the magnitude of the event with images from all latitudes of Australia – from Uluru and Townsville - but none, none of those for me were as exciting as having been right underneath that magnificent, glorious Tie Dye Crown.
The next night - Sunday, was estimated to be a continuance of the event and friends messaged me to ask if they should come down too - I baulked at giving advice as I was all too aware of how fickle this phenomenon can be. I arrived at the Tessellated pavement on the Sunday night and sat in hopeful conversation with photographers who had flown in that day from all over Australia. The BOM told me total cloud would roll in about 9pm - we waited from sunset in anticipation but ‘Minor activity’ was all our apps were saying. - a gentle green glow low on the horizon. The cloud arrived on time and overcome with exhaustion I retreated to a warm bed - bliss! Leaving for the early plane the next morning I found the Lady Aurora had indeed arrived - exactly 10hrs after the forecast - right on sunrise AEST. The fate of those who arrived a day late was, like so many times before, at the mercy of her fickleness.
I arrived home exhausted, happy, humbled and mostly grateful for having trusted my instincts which allowed me the privilege of a full immersion into such a glorious celestial spectacle. Oh, what a night! My cup was full, my obsession satiated – for now. :-)