24 March 2013 Chasing Aurora

Chasing Aurora

Aurora are formed when energetic charged particles (protons and electrons) from the sun interact with earth’s magnetosphere. These can be seen as glowing lights in the night sky in the Polar Regions. Oxygen atoms give off green and red lights. Nitrogen molecules emit red, blue and purple light. A solar cycle lasts approximately 11 years. This corresponds with the sun reversing polarity. During the solar maximum, in the middle of the cycle, there is a higher chance of storms that can produce solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). There is a greater likelihood of seeing aurora during solar maximum, of which we are nearing. When I was in Barrow, Alaska in the spring of 2009, the sun was in a minimum activity level. I only saw a little bit of green from the aurora a couple of times, and it left me wanting to see more.

My husband, Bill, and I set off for Fairbanks, Alaska on Wednesday, March 13th in search of aurora. We rented a car, dropped our bags at the hotel, slid on warm clothes and headed out in the early morning hours of March 14th. Our strategy was simple; drive outside of the city limits between the hours of 12 and 2 AM and find an open area to view the night sky. Our first night in Fairbanks was definitely colder than the 83°F temperature we left in Tucson a few hours earlier, with a temperature of 0°F combined with 30 mph winds. Shortly after we settled into the parked car, the inside of our windows started to frost up, obscuring our view of the sky. We quickly started scraping the windows with an old credit card. As we peered through the makeshift porthole in the windows we noticed a greenish blob glowing to our north. I hopped out of the car. The wind quickly blew off my jacket hood and my exposed fingers froze as I fumbled with my camera. A retreat to the car provided relief and relative warmth. After an hour of ducking in and out of the car to view, we decided to call it a night. As Bill maneuvered the car around the snowplows clearing the road into town, I noticed a lot more action in the sky. There was a curtain of green vertical lights wavering in the sky as if the wind was gently blowing them around. We pulled the car over into the snowplow parking lot and watched them dance over the city of Fairbanks. Just as our eyes were getting weary, we noticed the snowplows had finished their work and were heading toward our makeshift-parking place. It was a successful night. We headed back and dropped into bed exhausted, but happy.

On Thursday and Friday nights we were much better prepared on our quest for the Northern Lights. We discovered a new location during daylight hours that we would return to that night. As we explored our new rental car, I was excited to find out that we had a moon roof in the new car and I quickly dubbed it our Aurora Roof. Another wonderful feature was seat heaters! No one in their right mind would buy a car with this feature in Tucson, AZ where you can literally scorch your legs in the summer crawling into a car wearing shorts. It was perfect though for the -7°F temperatures each night. During the day, I did a little research about how to photograph the aurora. I manipulated my camera settings prior to heading out in the cold so that I could get some images of the green lights. We were successful again, and much warmer without the wind.

As I was searching around on my computer on Friday March 15th, my dream came true. An M-class solar flare was emitted from the sun along with a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). My students were just studying solar storms and know that a flare sends a burst of electromagnetic energy that reaches the Earth in 8 minutes. Particles from the CME take 2-4 days to reach Earth. According to all of the space weather reports, the particles should reach the Earth in the early morning hours of Sunday March 17th. Perfect, my flight didn’t leave for Anchorage until late that afternoon. After a short early evening nap, Bill and I woke up and could see the lights at 11 PM outside our hotel window in downtown Fairbanks! By the time we suited up in our cold weather gear, the parking lot was filled with guests and staff watching the lights in the middle of town. We drove to our usual spot and were amazed that the lights appeared across the sky, not just on the northern horizon. It was a combination of horizontal streaks and vertical curtains of green that ebbed and flowed throughout the early morning hours. It was a perfect finale to our visit in Fairbanks.

Enjoy the following picture taken by my friend, Ute Kaden, a former PolarTREC teacher who lives in Fairbanks. She is an expert photographer for auroras!

Here is a link for a webcam where you can see aurora. It is situated at University of Alaska Fairbanks. Aurora Webcam