Auroras are rare in southern British Columbia, however on July 24/25 2004 around midnight we were treated to a superb aurora display at the Island Star Party, held on the Malahat, near Victoria.

The colours ranged all the way from yellows and greens along the horizon to pink and blue spires standing up from horizon to almost zenith. There were some strange cloud-like formations at zenith, which only lasted a few seconds, and some aurora were even visible in the south. We also observed an odd display of rapid pulsing waves in the NE(several pulses per second), which ran parallel to the horizon line.

All images below have the following Camera settings: Canon EOS 300D Digital Rebel,  f/4, 30 sec, 18mm fl, ISO 800, WB:daylight. Image Processing: digital development from RAW format using Canon Digital Camera File Viewer Utility; Corel Photopaint: contrast stretch, colour depth reduced from 48 bits to 24 bits; Neat Image: moderate noise reduction; Corel Photopaint: images reduced from 3072x2048 to 800x533.

Take the time to adjust your monitor before viewing my online photos, and you will see them at their best.

A strong geomagnetic storm caused by a mass ejection from Sunspot 652 caused these rare aurora this far south in Canada.  Please see my Sun images for a photo of this sunpot.  The Big Dipper asterism is visible in most of these images.

Refer to SpaceWeather.com for news and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids

Take the time to adjust your monitor before viewing my online photos, and you will see them at their best.