Lately, there have been a few auroras showing up as far south as southern Utah.  When these opportunities pop up, I try to take advantage of them.  Last week, another such opportunity came up and so I pulled out my camera for the attempt.  Indeed, the aurora appeared over the skies of Bryce Canyon National Park.  What an amazing opportunity for me!

I’d been dreaming of this kind of opportunity since last year’s big aurora.  Indeed, it came this far south.  There were all kinds of photos all over the internet from Utah.  But I couldn’t contribute because the skies were cloudy that night.  I was very unhappy about that.  However, there was nothing I could do.  I can’t control the weather.

So, I made a point of keeping track of when the rare aurora is expected.  I even found a very useful free app to do so.  It pings me when the KP index is high enough and I set the threshold.  It even tracks the cloud cover so I can determine just how viable aurora visibility is for me.  This app enabled me to catch the last 3 auroras which appeared overhead for me.  But that’s only a part of the story.

The story begins with my husband telling me that he noticed something on the news the day before the aurora.  There was an article about a mass coronal ejection from the sun that day.  This means that an aurora is on the way.  It takes about 24 hours or so for the energy and radiation to hit Earth’s atmosphere.  When that happens, the aurora appears.  So, I had 1 day’s notice of the upcoming aurora.  I started planning.

This was the chance for me to try the photo shoot I was dreaming about.  If the aurora appeared this low, it would appear over Bryce Canyon.  It’s rare so I wanted that shot for my portfolio.  The problem is that most of the canyon faces east.  You really don’t see much of the canyon at all lining up with the northern sky.  With some careful planning and familiarity with the park, I picked my location and awaited the arrival and appearance.

That day, I received several notices of the KP index and also the weather conditions.  It was mostly cloudy that day, so visibility chances were low.  Thankfully, they weren’t impossible.  Still, I stayed glued to my app checking conditions all day.  I remained hopeful just in case things worked out for me.

When astronomical twilight descended, I went outside to check on conditions.  I saw what appeared to be light bleed in the northern sky.  This is a telltale sign of an aurora.  I just learned that fact in May this year.  So, we made the trek out to Bryce Canyon for my aurora photo shoot.

I arrived at my chosen location and found I wasn’t the only photographer shooting astro over Bryce that night.  However, I chose a different view to shoot from than they did.  I had that viewing platform to myself.  That was nice.

I dialed in my camera settings and started shooting the night sky.  I could see that there was an aurora visible but there were also clouds obscuring some of the visibility.  So, I worked to frame the canyon below me in with the aurora above me.  I still couldn’t believe that I was really shooting an Aurora Borealis over the top of Bryce Canyon.  What a dream come true!

This photo required significant work to make it into what you see here.  I needed to stack the images to remove digital noise.  However, my stacking software ended up removing all the stars!  It’s not supposed to do this.  It’s supposed to preserve the stars in the night sky and remove digital noise.  This problem meant I needed to take a single raw photo and return the stars to the photo manually.  That was detailed work.  But the stars are back and visible in the photo.

So, reader, what do you think of this dream photo shoot for me?  I think I came back with a dream landscape photo for my portfolio, but what do you think?  Do you like seeing an Aurora Borealis over Bryce Canyon National Park?  Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below.