We lucked out one night while in the southwest corner of Canada’s Yukon territory. After a long hike in Kluane National Park and Reserve, we turned off the highway to follow a rough fishermans road along Quill Creek until we picked out a camp spot. The aurora watch web sites showed that good activity was expected that night so I set up cameras ready for the usual long exposure time lapse recordings and kept watch. I was using my DSLR, my iPhone and my new Insta360 X5 camera that records in all directions at once (albeit with a pair of smallish sensors). It wasn’t long before we were treated to what began as a really great aurora display. It was really nice, lots of dancing colors in many directions.
And then things went nuts! We got what we would later learn is called a full auroral outburst. The whole sky erupted and lit up the ground much brighter than a full moon could. The curtains and swirls of color ran the full gamut of reds and purples and greens and they were moving fast – swirling and cascading around in real time. Normally you would capture an aurora on camera using extended exposures to bring out the colors that aren’t so obvious to the naked eye and you record many frames in time lapse over dozens of minutes to speed up the motion that is typically very slow, much like slow-moving clouds. Well now the whole sky, in every direction, was animating and swirling in full color to our naked eyes. This went on for many minutes… tt was amazing! Unfortunately, my cameras were still running time-lapse and longer exposures while we were so distracted by the light show. But regardless, it was awesome to experience!
I’ve done what I can with the recordings, adjusting exposure and slowing down the footage so that it doesn’t fly by in mere seconds:
There’s more pictures here in my Kluane National Park gallery:
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