Aurora 10/11 May 2024 from Lake Louise RV Park Alberta Canada

[Laurin Dave]

I'm just back from a three week trip to Canada to see our son who has been living in Whistler BC since late 2019.  We spent a couple of days in Vancouver before picking up an RV and heading out for a 14 day road trip with Sam and his girlfriend Ellie through Whistler, Kamloops, Jasper, Lake Louise, Banff, Revelstoke, Kelowna, Whistler and back to Vancouver.  On the night of the 10/11 May we were camped up at the Lake Louise RV park, luckily the only truly dark RV park we encountered.  I'd seen the Aurora alerts and photos from the UK earlier in the day so around 23:00 I stepped outside to see what there was ...   I looked to the North... where there were clear skies but only very light activity...  went back in the van for a few minutes .. then all four of us went out well wrapped up as it was very cold.   It was immediatley apparent that I'd been looking the wrong way ... An amazing Aurora was on display to the south!    I used my Nikon D750 with 24/120 zoom to take around 70 images at f4, 3sec and 1600ISO,  regrettably I'd decided to leave my Samyang 14mm f2.8 at home as it was so heavy . A faster wider lens would have been better as 3sec exposure was to long to capture fine detail as the Aurora was moving so fast and 14 mm would have given more than twice the fov..  That said I'm still amazed by the results and by the fantastic visual display we saw for over two hours before retiring back to the van frozen stiff.   I read somewhere that NASA said it was the best display in 500 years, how they know that is beyond me..   We just feel incredibly lucky to have witnessed the event.

Here are some of the still images plus a few GIFS which are at about 10x realtime.  Processed in Lightroom and Photoshop .   We hope to win a prize from CruiseCanada RV for the Van image!

Thanks for looking

Dave

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[carastro]

Fabulous photos and animations. 

[tomato]

Wow Dave, what an experience, thanks for posting. They are just sublime images, I reckon they should give the RV to you for that photo, what a way to promote the great outdoors.👍🏼

[Laurin Dave]

2 hours ago, carastro said:

Fabulous photos and animations. 

Thank you Carol

58 minutes ago, tomato said:

Wow Dave, what an experience, thanks for posting. They are just sublime images, I reckon they should give the RV to you for that photo, what a way to promote the great outdoors.👍🏼

Thanks Steve...   

[AstroNebulee]

Stunning images thank you. They are all brilliant but the third one is amazing to me, like being sucked up in a vortex. 

Clear skies 

Lee 

[Laurin Dave]

2 hours ago, AstroNebulee said:

Stunning images thank you. They are all brilliant but the third one is amazing to me, like being sucked up in a vortex. 

Clear skies 

Lee 

Thanks Lee ..