I had forgotten about the possibility of seeing the aurora. I happened to be in the backyard photographing the moon and got a decent glimpse of the amazing colors in the sky.
I grabbed a camera and tripod, jumped in the car, driving all around town taking photos. Old Burial Hill, Fountain Park, Redd’s Pond, and Grace Oliver’s Beach all provided excellent viewing.
The photos were taken during a dramatic solar blast in May, sparking the highest-level geomagnetic storm in Earth’s atmosphere since Halloween 2003. The storm made the northern lights visible as far south as Florida and Southern California.
The aurora borealis occurs when charged particles from the sun collide with gasses in Earth’s atmosphere, causing them to glow. Different gasses produce different colors: oxygen creates green and red lights, while nitrogen causes blue and purple hues.
The New York Times reported that the storm, classified as an “extreme” geomagnetic-five storm, was caused by a cluster of sunspots about 16 times the diameter of Earth. The cluster flared and ejected material every six to 12 hours, creating a disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field known as a geomagnetic storm, which caused auroras visible far from the poles.
The Marblehead Current is proud to partner with photographer Rick Cuzner. For the past 16 years, he has taken thousands of nature photographs.
