BEAM ME UP, SCOTTY (2016) < Previous | Next >
My first time ever watching the Northern Lights at Acadia National Park up in Maine on a trip where everything came together. Maine is pretty far south for the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis to be visible under usual circumstances. However on this night, Kp activity shot up from its usual levels of 2-3 to a 7 and that meant the Auroral Oval extended all the way down to the New England States.
Prior to this night, I’d only ever seen images of the Northern Lights and had never experienced them in person. Words simply cannot do justice to the experience of seeing them in person - for someone who grew up in the tropics in the midst of city lights where it was difficult to even spot stars on most nights, the Aurora represented something otherworldly. Growing up as a kid, I remember seeing episodes of the original Star Trek series - I would be mesmerized by the thoughts of the landing party beaming down to the surfaces of strange new worlds and experiencing novel phenomena. To me, this night just made me relive those moments! Experiencing the Northern Lights with my wife in Iceland probably is my favorite memory of our times together and of memories created through the pursuit of photography but this moment ranks right up there too.
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Technical Details: Nikon D750 with the 14-24mm lens. Two exposures, one at F/5.6 ISO 1600 for 480 seconds for the foreground and the other at F/2.8 ISO 6400 for 10 seconds for the lights blended together in Photoshop.
