Aurora on the night of September 22nd. Not much for “moving curtains” of light, but a beautiful array of glowing colors on the horizon.

Yeah, yeah, yeah…it’s been 3 weeks since I’ve blogged.  What can I say, feeling sorry for myself again with the Sjogren’s, haven’t felt very good and haven’t felt much like going out and shooting photos.  But I have had a few good photo ops in the last 3 weeks.

This one is pure serendipity.  A week ago Sunday, I got up extremely early, at 4:00 AM, with the intention of going west to the Pierre area and doing some fishing and birding.  Serendipity, because when I got up at 4:00, I checked my phone when eating breakfast, and saw that my “Solar Monitor” app was indicating a strong global solar storm of Kp 7.  The app doesn’t say specifically whether you’ll be able to see an aurora in your location, but I know that you generally need a Kp of 6 or higher to have much of a chance to see it this far south.

That’s the theory!  But in the 22+ years we’ve been in South Dakota, I’ve never seen an aurora.  Luck was on my side on this morning though.  Before beginning the 3+ hour drive to where I was going to fish and bird, I went to a dark spot outside of town, and lo-and-behold, an aurora was clearly visible.  It wasn’t the earth-shattering, magical moving curtains of light you see in the videos, it was more a glow of subtle colors on the far northern horizon.  Beautiful to watch though on a beautiful clear night!