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The ones that last just a few minutes... probably not. I see those spikes to 20.... they should be here shortly so we'll see.

Man these pulsations are awesome and very high in the sky. Pretty bright activity too, don't even need to let your eyes adjust when walking outside. Definitely consistent with a local substorm outside the primary auroral belt.

Solar wind speed is plenty high enough to inject energy into middle latitudes. Strongly negative Bz is cancelling out earths protective magnetic field Proton density is now so low that there is pretty much nothing to convert to photons, making everything else kinda irrelevant.

There was a nice, perfect green arc stretching across the sky up to about 30 degrees, tall rays only lasted about 2 minutes. Just a faint glow more to the west now. Did anyone else catch that awesome meteor in the eastern sky? Big and bright orange, ultimately splitting into a couple pieces before fading out. The next arrival of good solar wind should kick the activity up again...the Bz has been holding even lower, but the density has dropped even further. Hard to get bright activity with a density of 2-3 protons.

OK I'm seeing very visible tall rays about poking very high into the sky. Should last a little while longer and then stop. There is another Bz drop in progress which will arrive in exactly 32 minutes.

lol... the sky is currently still brighter than any northern lights you are ever going to see. Have some patience and try again in about 25 minutes.

The Bz was strongly negative for about 45 minutes but has flipped. The density has come down to 7'ish from over 40, and Btotal is half of what it was, so G4-G5 levels aren't going to happen. When you factor in the transit delay, that favorable period should be arriving in about 30 minutes and will last for about 45. It should be plenty sufficient for a burst to G3. But we'll be fighting lingering daylight.

Already a total Bz reversal. Might flip back, might not.

Sweet jesus, this is absolutely ideal and suitable for as much as G5 levels of storming. Too bad it doesn't get dark until 10pm... conditions usually don't stay quite this good for more than a few hours. Solar Wind: 700.2 Density: 26.3 Btotal: 38.2 nT Bz: 37 nT south

Nice brief G2 geomagnetic storm earlier today (well, yesterday). Conditions aren't favorable now but I checked a few times anyways.

Last night was a good example of what a G1 geomagnetic storm will look like on a moonless night in NNE. Faint, but visible if you're looking. They're never really reported or acknowledged because they're common, occurring on roughly 900 days each solar cycle. Last night was somewhat noteworthy for a G1 in that the activity was weirdly high in the sky, meaning it was closer than normal. Also, as you noted the pulsing effect is a bit unexpected at such low activity levels. When I saw it, a small patch of sky would gradually get brighter over about 15 seconds and then abruptly fade out over about 2 seconds.

Was this with the D5000? I'm super jealous of how clean and crisp it is. Really makes my camera (Nikon 8700) look pretty sad.

I saw the animation of the CME and wrote it off.... it didn't look too impressive... certainly didn't expect a G4 storm from it. Figured it would be a nice show for Alaska.

What type of camera do you have?

Pretty impressive how skillfully it managed to start fizzling as soon as the sun set. Best photo I could manage from tonight with frozen hands and 300mph wind.

Wow, that's really great. I've kinda fallen out of photography so I'm not too up to date with the extent of the improvements. Being able to take shorter exposures would really come in handy tonight. My hands are like ice and I have to hold the shutter down because I don't have a cable release thingy.

It'll matter in about an hour. The satellite that measures the data is way out there.

ok very bright

Clearing out a bit. Very noticeable glow out there now and it's much higher in the sky-- promising.

What you can get away with for ISO settings totally depends on your camera. If you've got noise, it's set too high. My camera is over a decade old and has horrible noise above ISO 200. New cameras supposedly maintain decent quality and go up to 1600 or even 3200. Secret tip: Leave your camera outside. Excessive grain/noise issues can be caused by heat on your cameras sensor, so keeping it cold makes a big difference. You can really see this in action if you look at dendrites webcam in the winter vs summer.

http://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/ace-mag-swepam-6-hour.gif http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/ace-real-time-solar-wind

A few more from that night.

I picked this up as a hobby from 2001-2003... you could see the lights about 1-2 times per month... the sun was just completely unhinged those years. Not much money to be made from small, grainy images. Would be nice though!

I cry every time I think about losing the larger originals of these.

Reds and violets are visible from the darkest locations in the strongest storms. Cameras will pick reds up easily, but the human eye won't. Most photos are long exposed and exaggerated in that sense, but the one you posted is probably very close to accurate. I've only seen reds and violets twice.