24 March 1991: Ottumwa, Iowa

Unfortunately, I'm not exactly sure about the dating of this display. Digging through Sky and Tel from this time period yielded a report of a great display on this date. I know for sure that this display must have been from about March to July, and almost certainly was from March to May. I had stopped recording the geomagnetic information on WWV by this time, primarily because I was finishing my last semester at the University of Iowa and was working pretty hard on my Senior Thesis (as well as my classes).

However, I do have a written record of this display. It was just notes scribbled down in a palm-sized notebook, but I will give them nearly verbatim. Stuff in parenthesis represent arrows on the original paper. The numbers correspond to the photo number and the integration time, and the times are local time, UT minus 6 hours:

2:32 still getting brighter without a doubt it is aurora
2:37 #1 15 sec
2:43 #2 20 sec
2:50 bright spot and a ray possibly forming
2:52 #3 20 sec
3:05 #4 20 sec a little fainter now
3:12 #5 20 sec brighter could see an arc a little
3:20 has died out some
3:23 rays forming up to 50-60 degrees not very bright
3:25 #6 reddish tinge at top
3:27 #7 still red, 2 rays not very bright - disappearing
3:28 brightening at base
3:30 ray trying to reform 10-20 degrees E of N
3:31 new one NE 30-40 degrees both faint
3:33 #8 20 sec
3:35 no rays
3:36 ray rapidly forming due N
3:37 3 rays #9 20 sec, nope 4 rays, 15 degrees either side of N, 10 degrees NW and 30 degrees NE
3:39 rays are drifting W at 5 degrees/min
3:40 have faded a lot, large red glow NW behind tree
3:42 #10 20 sec ray 30 degrees NE
3:43 (current ray) wide, other stuff happening
3:44 #11 20 sec
3:46 red glow expanding up and E
3:48 E ray developing bright core
3:49 #12 30 sec (of that ray)
3:51 general pale red glow NW-NE with a few diffuse rays
3:55 5 rays from N-NE but faint, up to 50 degrees
4:04 still red haze, 2 faint rays up to 60 degrees
4:08 #13 20 sec, things have calmed down a lot
4:11 ray 5 E of N a little better, +1 fast meteor just W of Polaris left brief trail
4:13 may have been a big meteor E out of corner of eye, earlier saw +1 near Arcturus
4:14 things have faded again
4:16 ray at 20E getting better
4:20 not much happening, not even much lower glow
4:34 same
4:35 +0 meteor went perpendicularly by Pointers, then 30 sec later +1 below Polaris

Phew! The photos were all shot with my 50mm lens at either f/1.7 or f/2.8. Unfortunately, the photos were on Seattle FilmWorks film (I can't believe I used that stuff!), ASA 400. The aurora came out pretty dim, and I only give photos 3 and 10, as described above.

Back to the aurora photos index

File last modified: 01 December 2004