Earlier this month, we were very lucky and happened to be at my favorite dark sky site – Dell City, Texas – when I got an alert on my phone that we might have a Kp8 geomagnetic storm coming the next day, with a chance to see the Northern Lights much lower than usual.

I have the app on my phone because we’ve traveled to places where seeing the Northern Lights was possible.  We even saw them on the horizon from Inverness, Scotland.  We’ve also been on two trips where Northern Lights tours were on the agenda – but both tours were cancelled due to weather.  Earlier this year, when there was another big geomagnetic storm, we went north to Conroe, Texas where people reported seeing the lights.  I found a great foreground – but alas, no lights.

So imagine my delight when I was setting up my telescope in Dell City, Texas, where the skies are very familiar to me, and I looked up and saw moving red lights to the north.  Red lights to the north are not normal.  The Northern Lights were visible from Texas!  I literally sprinted into our Air B&B to get my husband and my camera.

I took glamour shots of my telescope with the aurora.

I took glamour shots of our Air B&B with the aurora.

I made some time lapse movies.

Camera geek info:

• Canon EOS 60D in manual mode, 5 – 10 second exposures, ISO 1600
• Rokinon 14 mm f2.8 lens, manual focus
• Intervalometer
• Tripod

And I’m left with the question: when can we see this again?  It was amazing.

What amazing things have you seen recently?