Northern Lights!

I may have seen mention of the current northern lights display. I did see the map showing the likely sightings area, and noted that my part of Illinois was just outside of it. But I had already experienced a few disappointments and didn’t think about trying to spot them again.

Then last night around midnight I was poking around online and spotted a post on either Threads or Bluesky of a NORTHERN LIGHTS SIGHTING ABOVE DOWNTOWN CHICAGO. I figured if the lights could be seen despite all that light pollution, I had a chance. So I grabbed my phone and ventured out into the autumn chill (nights dipping into the 40’s, y’all) and headed out.

Wooded areas. Lots of trees. Streetlights. But I had read that the reason the lights appear so vivid in photographs is because phone cameras detect light that our eyes don’t, so I pointed my phone towards some patches of sky visible through the trees and snapped.

I didn’t see anything. But I looked at the photo and saw those hints of greenish blue.

??

So I walked around until I reached a clear expanse of northern sky and started snapping.

Most of the photos consist of a vast smear of pink which was pretty exciting as far as I was concerned as this is the first time I ever witnessed northern lights in person. However, they honestly weren’t that striking. I don’t have much experience editing photos, but decided to pick the best photo and lighten it.

Northern lights with bonus stars

What I like about this photo is that a few stars in the constellation Auriga the Charioteer showed up clearly. Counterclockwise from the top brightest star, they are Capella, Menkalinan, and Mahasim;. The two faint ones at the top are, I think, Almaaz and Saclateni, also called “The Kids.” This site has a really good diagram of the constellation.

I wish the clusters had shown up. I also spotted Jupiter, which was the brightest thing in the sky. It photographed like a fuzzball, unfortunately. That’s what usually happens when I try to photograph bright things with the phone camera.