Photographing Auroras in Southern Utah

The northern lights are a phenomena that generally occurs at high latitudes. From my understanding it is caused by charged particles coming off from the sun that interact with the magnetic fields high above the earth resulting in a dance of colors that have intrigued people for as long as they have been people.

In general this phenomena is actually not that uncommon in certain parts of the world. Apparently there is a zone, called the Aurora Zone that resides between 10 and 20 degrees north and south of the poles that get auroras nearly daily. For the rest of the world though, these events are generally unseen except during more extreme events

As the sun oscillates between its more or less active cycles, called a solar cycle, it produces more or less ionized material. This material is generally understood as the solar winds that bombard our earth with material. Based on how much material is released we get different amounts of aurora activity. And since the sun goes through a cycle where it produces more or less material that strikes our earth, the expanse of the earth that gets aurora activity also fluctuates as well.

As mentioned these northern lights occur further north, not near southern Utah. But on occasion something called a solar flare sends a large chunk of plasma our way and if we are particularly lucky we get a direct strike. When we get direct strikes we are blessed with Aurora's much further south than normal. And 2024 has been a particularly exciting year for these events.

Beginning in May, the earth was hit with a huge coronal mass ejection resulting in a geomagnetic storm that was the highest rating (G5) and for the first time in my life I saw an aurora.

Unfortunately, this aurora happen to correspond with a huge amount of life events that only occur once in a life time and there were clouds. So instead of traveling to far flung parts of the earth, I check cloud cover maps and headed to closest dark spot that didn't have straight overcast.

You would think that after having 10 years of experience photographing a wide variety of natural phenomena I would be prepared to photograph the Aurora. The fact was, I was stumped. When I got there, I could see a fain glow on the horizon, but didn't know what to even look for. I didn't know what color balance to shoot at or frankly how long I should expose for.

So I guessed.... and failed the first few attempts.

I didn't really know what to expect since I didn't look anything up. So after looking at the back of my LCD screen I tapped my toe in the darkness and thought to my self, "yeah I guess the sky is kinda red." So I tried again... and not much came from it. Not only was I floundering, but I had decided to bring my kids along so they could see and they were beginning to fall apart. It was late, cold and kinda scary for the youngest I had with me.

Dang! I guess I would try tomorrow night.

The next evening, I dragged my parents along with me out to the Joshua Tree's to see if we could see anything. In-between attempt one and attempt two I did a bit of reading and learned a few things like exposure settings and color temperature. I also brought a light to light up the subject I was photographing, so that was a bonus too.

Into the night we went, down a dirt road into the wild deserts of southern Utah. Once again I could see a faint glow on the horizon, so using my mediocre skills as an astro/aurora photographer I went to work. And low and behold I got something!

The air was calmer than my first night and thus I got a really pretty shimmer on the horizon with my Joshua trees standing proudly in the dark. Then the lights disappeared and all my work came to an abrupt end. The Kp Index tanked and I lost all my colors.

Fast forward a few months

The sun has been particularly active these past couple weeks and I was keeping an eye on my Aurora app. Then on Tuesday October 8th a huge solar flare directly facing earth occurred. All eyes were on the forecasts and after a day or so, NOAA issues some major predictions with Kp indexes as high as 8.3. At 8.3 the chance of aurora on the northern horizon was particularly high and the chance of crimson skies was even better here in Southern Utah.

Of course, mother nature decided to throw a wrench in all of this. As the day went along a cold front coming out of the North East was going to pass directly over the state of Utah beginning in the evening and would cause overcast conditions all the way till the morning. Yeah, the second time in close to 20 years the aurora would be visible in my region and it would be blocked by clouds.

But I kept watch and soon some good news appeared. Zion was to be patchy clouds for the first few hours of the night which the aurora was going to be good. To Zion I went.

The drive to Zion was one of wonder and questions. On my drive I could see something was going on to the north again. But there was another complication thrown into the mix. We had a half moon also lighting up the clouds, so I didn't know if what I was seeing was the clouds an the moon or the aurora. Since I didn't quite know what to expect I went to a spot I have photographed many times before, as it is a solid composition and has a good look north.

Camera setup up with quick and I shifted my white balance to about 3500 to hopefully get a good result. I did a test image and lo and behold something was for sure going on. I did a few adjustment shots and then the magic happened.

The night sky was a glow of pinks and reds. the clouds were being lit up by both aurora and light from the moon. And since I did have the moon out, the landscape was lit up. Usually I would have expected this shot to be in the dark, but here I was, having a full landscape lit up almost like day time with stars dancing above while having the atmosphere turn to the color of passion. A truly amazing thing to photography.

Funny enough though, my eyes couldn't see any of it.

So after a few different shots, I set off into Zion and photographed a few other structures including the west temple and the east temple. But these were not nearly as photogenic as those first few images of Kinesava and the west temple.