A geomagnetic storm of level G5 on NOAA’s G-scale, triggered by a coronal mass ejection, caused northern lights to be visible as far south as southern Florida and the Mediterranean region on 11.05.2024. The storm hit Germany under favourable conditions: There was no disturbing moonlight and the weather was excellent. From the north of Wiesbaden, the view is towards the sparsely populated (and therefore less affected by light pollution) Taunus mountains. So I managed to get a few amazing pictures of this natural spectacle. I also combined 50 2.5s exposures taken at regular intervals from 01:15:15 to 01:18:25 UTC (190s; by this time, astronomical twilight had already begun) to create a time-lapse movie with a length of 12.6s. The time-lapse factor is therefore 15x.
The star approximately in the middle between the (left) roof ridge and the upper edge of the image is Polaris, the North Star, which belongs to the constellation Ursa Minor. At the top left you can see the part of the constellation Ursa Major known as the “Big Dipper”. At the top right is the constellation Cassiopeia, which resembles the letter “w” and above it the constellation Cepheus.
In Greek mythology, Kassiopeia was married to Kepheus and her daughter was Andromeda. In the constellations, the two are written in the Latinized form with a C, a letter that does not exist in Greek.
No colors were visible to the unaided eye, the auroral rays looked whitish and where highly dynamic: they appeared just as quickly as they vanished again.
Above the house you can see (from bottom left to top right) a satellite moving upwards, which finally disappears into the earth’s shadow. The brief brightening of the house was caused by a passing car.
Click on the left thumbnail to see a single image from the series in high resolution. The right image shows my wife and me just before midnight UTC (2:00 local time) in a nearby park, a 6s exposure. When we left the house, there were very impressive rays that even spread to the south, but the location was not very favorable because of many trees and streetlights. Then we went to this park, but the aurorae had faded. She went back home before the second show started after 1:00 UTC.
