Not the northern light perse!!! Quiet simply one of most amazing astronomic event I have captured to date. Living in Kansas, the Northern Lights are an infrequent site to see visually yet alone photographically. The geomagnetic storm that occurred on Oct 10 and 11 was absolutely spectacular visually and to capture with my extremely widefield set up. More photos of the Aurora to come, but this capture will be one I will never forget.
I was north of our small town taking pictures of the Lights over the back drop of a small country church. While doing so, I noticed a red streak off to the east that was angled to south east. After taking a few pictures, I had remembered
@Debra Ceravolo posted a recent and spectacular picture of her observatory and something I had never seen called a Stable Aurora Red Arc (SAR). At that moment, I found her image and decided to take a few more pictures of this area to the east. While doing so, my friend Ryan told me he saw the same phenomenon to the west by the Church building.
Like a flash going off in my head, I realized it could be the same Arc !!!! I flipped my 14 mm rig vertical and pointed south and proceed to take 5 panoramic shots each at 15 seconds. I repeated the process to make sure I hopefully did not goof anything up. The act of merely blinking through images showing the complete arc nearly took my breath away.
Stable Aurora Red Arc were discovered in the 1950s and represent a current area of research. They are thought to be ions trapped in the magnetic field lines near the equator compared to the northern or southern lights with the magnetic field lines directed toward the poles. These ions colide with Oxygen in the high atmosphere that cause a stable aurora phenomenon that can last for hours as was the case during this past night. The arc appearance occurs because of perspective of the equatorial geodesic from my latitude.
Of note, you can see Jupiter in the left of the image and Saturn in the southwest. M42 and M45 are visible along with the edge of the Milk Way on the right side of the image.
I would love any and all feedback on this image as I think it is spectacular and would like to submit it for an APOD in the future. The panoramic stitching was not perfect, but I gave it my best shot in photoshop.
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