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October 28, 2001 - Near Granite Falls, WA
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For
two days after receiving the Spaceweather.com
email alert indicating that recent solar activity could spark a low-latitude
display of the northern lights, I kept a close eye on the web pages that track
auroral activity—but nothing doing. 
Fast
forward to midnight, Saturday night: dozing in my living room chair, bad movie
in the VCR & glass of wine in my belly, I decided to hit the hay. But first,
just one more peek at the charts. It was then that I saw that one of the main
indicators, the "Kp" index, had skyrocketed in the past few hours
(right). So I pulled on shoes & a sweatshirt, grabbed my camera gear and
drove north for over an hour looking for dark skies & clear horizons. When
I reached the vicinity of Granite Falls, I found what I was looking for! It's
been 20 years since I last saw the northern lights; now I've got the pictures
I've been trying to get ever since! Of the four images included here, #3 is
my favorite. (If you care about photo details: 28mm, f2.5, 10-20 sec exposures,
Fuji 800 film.)
This page uses Javascript to display the pictures; if you have any problems viewing them (e.g., images are stretched, slideshow doesn't work at all, etc.), I'd appreciate knowing about it.
- Rob