Both Colorado and national media have been full of gorgeous photos of last night’s spectacular aurora borealis — unusually bright and visible much farther south in the US than is normal, reportedly as far south as Texas and Louisiana this time. As in the past, light pollution and trees here in Thornton kept me from seeing anything, and I don’t drive after dark. That leaves me oohing and aahing over all the photos by everyone else.
I did come across one interesting and unexpected photo, a shot from the webcam (in black-and-white night vision mode) at the visitor center atop Pikes Peak:
Those light patches and vertical streaks in the sky are the aurora borealis, as seen from the summit at 14,115 feet. Colorado Springs lies far below at 6,033 feet, still more than a mile above sea level.
I’m guessing the one bright light is the headlight of the cog rail engine. That’s about where the tracks are. If there were passengers aboard, imagine the view they had!
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Header image: Photo by Heather Stone from eastern Boulder County, Colorado.
I love all of them that I’ve seen, even this one shot from the visitor center!
I don’t know why but I’m kind of intrigued that the aurora shows up even in a black and white webcam photo.
Amazing images. That’s the first BW I’ve seen
The colors were seen as far as Huntsville by naked eye – better seen my iPhone cameras ( instructions were given by weather guy. cameras see more range/low light. Who knew?)
Too cloudy here…nothing to mention the lights. (It was so nice when we actually had dark sky – evening the middle of the big city)
It had never occurred to me that a b/w camera could see the aurora. I had just stopped by in case there was some interesting confluence of city lights and clouds and that sort of thing.
I went out twice trying to catch a glimpse, and these was a glow to the north, but the light pollution was too much and I decided to not take the car out. Years ago I visited the Space Weather lab in Boulder on a field trip associated with a course I took, and I kept thinking of how busy those guys were during this event.
I guess if I’d known in advance it was going to happen I could have prevailed upon my son to drive me out into the boonies for a good view. But somehow I missed the news that it was going to be so much brighter than the last time when it was viewable only up in the mountains.
I think that it surprised everyone!