May 2024 Solar Storm
The May 2024 solar storm produced northern lights aurora far to the south of normal locations. I got these photos in our back yard at around 2:30 AM on May 11. The effect was very subtle. To the naked eye, it just appeared as very light cloud, no color. But the camera sensitivity picked up the faint purple and green hues. I did see it ripple across the sky a couple times as I was setting up the camera. I created this crude timelapse video from the images. It jumps around as I move the camera around and play with different settings. The storm is caused by sunspots. This post at the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center and this article at CNN provide details. You can see how the sunspot pattern has changed recently by comparing photos of the sun on different dates. I took the images below with my cellphone held up to the eyepiece of the solar telescope I showed in TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE, APRIL 8, 2024 . The first image is from that day. The second is from May 12; the sunspot cluster
