Northern lights above our field – a rare sight
A very unusual photobomb
On the night of 10–11 May 2024, I had actually planned to photograph the night sky as usual. The telescope was already set up outside when I noticed that the sky had taken on a rather suspicious red hue. At our latitudes, light pollution is usually a more likely explanation than the northern lights – but this time, it really was the sky itself.
At the time, the Sun was already in the maximum phase of its current activity cycle. Powerful solar eruptions occur more frequently during this phase. Several coronal mass ejections had recently reached Earth and triggered an extreme geomagnetic storm. As a result, the auroral oval expanded unusually far south, making the northern lights visible to the naked eye even over the Ore Mountains.
For observing, this was of course a rare stroke of luck. For the astrophotography I had originally planned, however, the red glow in the sky was more of a nuisance. There are certainly much worse reasons to interrupt an imaging session, though.
So I grabbed my camera, wide-angle lens and tripod in rather a hurry and ran outside. That is how I ended up with both a photo of my already-set-up telescope beneath the northern lights and a shot of the field path just around the corner. No trip to Lapland, no lengthy preparation – just an unexpectedly red sky over the Ore Mountains and a slightly frantic excursion to the nearest field.
