Aurora Borealis Appears Again

The Northern Lights Made a Second Rare Appearance Here in New England

The past two nights the conditions were good for potentially seeing the Northern Lights here in New England once again. One chance to see the Aurora Borealis as far south as the Boston area is very rare; twice in the same year is unheard of. So, on the nights of 10 and 11 October 2024, we ventured out in the late evening and luckily got to see some amazing sights.
 
As with the last time earlier this year (on 10 May 2024), prior to heading out we consulted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center (https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/) to check the forecast to find out if the conditions were actually good for seeing the Northern Lights in our area – since they’re the authoritative source for solar and space environment data.

We also checked our “Sky Live”, “Moon Calendar” and “Lumnos” apps once again to see what the sky conditions were, the phase of the moon, and the location of the moon in the night sky.  

The air was crisp, the skies were clear, and the moon was in the Southern sky – so the viewing conditions were excellent. As mentioned in our previous Aurora blog from earlier this year (11 May 2024), we found that our cameras “saw” the lights (which are caused by charged particles from the Sun interacting with the Earth’s electromagnetic field) much better than our eyes. So, we had to shoot lots of photos and then see what showed up on our cameras. Again, we were surprised many times because the faint colors and striations that we saw in the sky were much brighter and more pronounced in the images that our cameras captured. Here's a great write-up by Ewen Bell explaining why this occurs: "Why Auroras Look Different on The Camera"

The gallery below shows photos of the Northern Lights that appeared in our town’s skies during the two nights – along with a couple photos of our Town Center that was coincidentally lit up that week: ​ ​(click on any photo to start the slideshow)