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April 24, 2012: Tiny specks of light twinkle from a lonely freighter (dead center). For more of Shawn Malone's stunning photography, go to LakeSuperiorPhoto.com.![aurora_milky_way]()
April 22, 2012: An aurora and the Milky Way. For more stunning photography by Shawn Malone, go to LakeSuperiorPhoto.com.![meteor_aurora]()
April 22, 2012: A meteor streaks across the sky. See more at LakeSuperiorPhoto.com.![aurora_on_horizon]()
April 24, 2012: Northern lights on the horizon.![northern_lights_star_trails]()
April 22, 2012: Light trails and light pollution.![brightest_aurora_venus]()
April 13, 2012: Venus sets next to a stunningly bright aurora over the water.![trees_aurora]()
March 16, 2012: Subtle but beautiful, the eerie green glow of the aurora permeates the night sky.![beautiful_colors_aurora]()
March 19, 2012: After four straight days of auroras, suddenly, a beautiful spectrum of color.![Aurora Storm]()
The solar storm hitting our atmosphere resulted in a vivid display of gorgeous colors. For Michel Tournay, the whole sky was green and purple. "I had trouble deciding where to aim my camera."![Aurora Storm]()
Another shot of the aurora -- more commonly called the Northern Lights -- taken near the LG-1 dam, 20 miles from Chisasibi, Quebec, in Canada with a Nikon D3 camera.![Battling the Clouds]()
In Ringsaker, Norway, the aurora borealis was fighting with clouds, moonlight, and sunlight for visibility at 2am local time Wednesday morning.![Stockholm Scene]()
Photographer Peter Rosen captured this eye-popping view of the northern lights over Stockholm, Sweden.![A Starry Night]()
These Northern Lights were very faint to the human eye, but vivid to the camera. Photographer Mike Hillingshead describes how he captured it in Little Sioux, Iowa: “If one didn’t know what they were looking for they’d never have known they were there. With a camera it makes it easy to be sure. For a couple hours, I was readily picking up the red/purple higher up while the near horizon area was full of clouds. Got a cap and could see green through it and was then I was sure.”![Canadian Arctic]()
This shot of the aurora was taken by Doug McLarty in the Canadian Arctic -- near the Rankin Inlet area in Nunavut, Canada.![Beauty in Babbitt]()
“My wife and I headed out last night to see if the recent solar flares would produce some northern lights in our area. We were fortunate to catch a few nice displays before it dimmed.” – Photographer Tom Pinkerton.![Hiding Behind Clouds]()
Photographer Eric Coulombe caught this pretty scene in Val-d’or, Quebec, Canada. “There were some nice auroras that were hidden behind a cloud, but it was a great show.”![Star Trails and Northern Lights]()
“The Northern Lights were out last night from about 11 to midnight. At times they were bright and well defined. This picture was shot at Elbow Lake near Grand Marais, Minnesota. Even with the streaks, you can still make out the shape of the big dipper pointing right to the North Star.” – Photographer Bryan Hansel![Purple Green]()
This shot of an amazing aurora with lots of green and purple was taken by Colin Chatfield just east of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in Canada.![A Passing Meteor]()
“They were bright, but I've seen brighter. The aurora was dancing around with swirling structure and a red glow at the base. The faint streak on one photo is a meteor that I saw while taking the picture.” – Photographer Gunjan Sinha in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.![Northern Lights]()
The solar event caused a beautiful light show for Shawn Malone of Marquette, Mich. He captured this picture over Lake Superior; there's a green hue because of oxygen emissions in the atmosphere. Nitrogen emissions would produce a blue or red glow depending on the state of the atoms.![Watching]()
There was nothing more than a hint of green above the horizon in Ontario, Canada, where Robert Snache watched the event.![Northern Glow and Startrails]()
The storm has subsided quite a bit from reports, but still gave Robert quite a view.![Aurora Over Oslo]()
"We drove up into the woods in hope that we would be able to photograph the aurora that was supposed to appear all over southern Norway," writes a photographer from Oslo. "When we reached our destination the skies where partially clouded but is seemed to be getting clearer." Looks like it cleared up well enough to capture this stunning shot.![Aurora Over Oslo]()
"Miraculously, the fog disappeared as fast is it had arrived," explained Norwegian photographer Trym Norman Sannes. "Just a short time later as I was photographing the rising moon I saw a green ray of northern light on my cameras LCD. After this it just got more intense."![Minnesota]()
Much of the U.S. was cloudy, but some photographers lucked out -- like Travis Novitsky. "Well, the aurora made a pretty good showing last night! It sounds like most everyone in Minnesota had cloudy skies, but lucky for me the clouds didn't move in to my area until after the aurora faded."![Beautiful Aurora]()
![Minnesota's Stars]()
"These images were all captured between 11:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m," explains Minnesotan photographer Travis Novitsky. "At about 11:45 I noticed the moon was coming up, so I made a couple of exposures of the moon as well as the northern lights." The results are stunning.![Stars Over Minnesota]()
It appears tke sky remained clear long enough for Novitsky to capture some truly great photographs.![Wisconsin]()
"It was a sweet surprise to catch a glimpse again of a spectacular event known as the Aurora Borealis over Lake Wissota in Chippewa Falls, WI, where I live," said photographer Tony Wilder.![Gorgeous Aurora]()
"I grabbed these shots with my CANON 30D on a tripod manually focused to infinity at f2.8 ISO 400 for 20 seconds," said Wilder. "The northern lights never get old, but I got tired and headed back in to crash at about 3 a.m. CST."![Over Chippewa Falls, WI]()
While many portions of the United States were clouded over last night, Wisconsin seems to have experienced beautiful weather.![Skies Over Saskatoon]()
Bob Johnson photographed beautiful dancing auroras over Canada -- and a meteor as well.![Green Smudge]()
By the time it was dark enough to see, the aurora was merely a green smudge low on the horizon, Robert reports.![Spectacular Aurora]()
In northern latitudes, the effect is known as the aurora borealis, named after the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek name for the north wind, Boreas. The solar event caused skies to light up from the U.S. to Denmark, where this spectacular view of an aurora was taken.![Auroral Mechanism]()
Auroras are the result of emissions of photons in the Earth's upper atmosphere, about 50 miles above the ground. Oxygen and nitrogen atoms are ionized or excited by the collision of solar wind particles, such as those caused by the solar emission.![Solar Eruption]()
This extreme ultraviolet snapshot from the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the sun's northern hemisphere in mid-eruption amidst a tumult of activity: a C3-class solar flare, a solar tsunami, multiple filaments of magnetism, shaking of the corona, radio bursts and a coronal mass ejection.![Sun_Waking_Up]()
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory snapped this X-ray photo of the Sun early in the morning of Sunday, August 1. The dark arc near the top right edge of the image is a filament of plasma blasting off the surface -- the "coronal mass ejection" that led to the auroras. The bright region is an unassociated solar flare.Amazing auroras: Mother Nature's stunning light show
95 million miles from the Earth, the sun erupts in spectacular solar flares -- and here on Earth, we are dazzled by auroras that dance and twist across the face of the planet.
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- Amazing auroras: Mother Nature's stunning light show
