On the night of April 23rd, the northern hemisphere experienced an aurora that reached all the way down to at least Virginia. That doesn’t happen very often. I’ve been lucky enough to see them twice before (sadly it was cloudy for the one that happened just a couple of weeks ago). In both of those cases the aurora was faint enough that I couldn’t see any color with my eyes though the camera caught it.

The same thing was true here. The 30 second exposures of the allsky camera had no trouble picking up the pinkish glow from the aurora but all I could see was a brightening of the northern horizon.

This video is a timelapse of the night showing the state of the sky. North is down and east is to the right. You will see a pinkish glow to the north. The greenish glow to the northeast is terrestrial light pollution (you can see it reflect off the clouds when they arrive). The occasional flashes that light up the tree are caused by the headlights of cars driving by. The occasional “jiggle” in the video at the beginning was caused by high winds shaking the mast the camera was attached to.

Unfortunately, the clouds arrive with a vengeance just as the aurora seems to be intensifying.