Aurora Borealis

Solar activity is near its maximum in its eleven-year cycle.  There was a big solar storm (CME) and auroral display that I missed a week ago, but managed to get this one Thursday evening (Oct. 10, 2024).  I had seen aurora previously, but nothing like this from Ottawa.  Rather than appearing as a curtain of light close to the horizon the light was all around, causing a bit of a dilemma in terms of where to  point the camera at any given instance, and how to get it all in the frame.  Its very rare to have the aurora over head at 45N latitude (more expected in Iceland at 66N where I had seen this effect). In some images you'll see the corona pattern with rays emanating from an apparent source in the sky (like the radiant of a meteor shower).  The center point was so high overhead at times that it was difficult to get the ground in the shot as well to give perspective, and this is shooting with a 14mm lens. Without any ground in the frame the image becomes an interesting abstract of colour.  Definitely an abundance of riches.  In some images facing north you can make out the Big Dipper and sometimes Cassiopeia was well.  While impressive enough to the naked eye, just a bit of integration in a camera really brought out the colour.  These images are 5sec-15sec exposures.  I haven't done much processing, and actually needed to desaturate the red in them to prevent the red from overwhelming the photos.  The red colour originates with high altitude oxygen and the green from nitrogen with a dash of pink / magenta from nitrogen as well at lower altitude.  These images were taken over 3 hours and I was happy that it was cloudy the next night, so tired.