Blinded by the Lights

Science or serendipity? Which is the best way to catch the northern lights? The answer is, yes.

You could almost hear the trumpets blaring: “Northern Lights to be Visible in at least 17 States!” one website proclaimed. “Dazzling Celestial Light Show to Appear Overhead!” exclaimed another. Newspaper copy editors were wearing out their “exclamation point” keys. Clicks and requests for information on the best places to see the all-but-guaranteed display skyrocketed on websites and in social media groups. Trips were planned, reservations made. All eyes to the northern sky.

And then, nothing. No northern lights. No dancing skies. The whole thing fizzled faster than a wet fuse on a firecracker.

What happened? Nothing really, except yet another example of the endless allure of the northern lights, a lesson in the power of misinformation, the difficulty in fully understanding the effects of an unpredictable sun spitting electronically charged particles towards a tiny spinning dot 93 million miles away, and a reminder that sometimes the best things in life are those you can’t plan, those that take you totally by surprise.

I am as guilty as anyone. My camera batteries were charged, the gas tanks full on the Little Dipper just in case. But, I’ve been there before when it comes to the vagaries of seeing, or not seeing, the northern lights.

Once, my editor at Reader’s Digest called and wanted me to do a story on the northern lights. “Where can you go to have the best chance of seeing them?” she asked. Alaska, I told her so she sent me to a place outside of Fairbanks known as Poker Flats, the largest land-based rocket research range in the world. Operated by the University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute under a contract with NASA, Poker Flats is where they shoot research rockets, hundreds of them, up into high energy displays of the northern lights to study their behavior. That is, when there are high energy displays of northern lights to shoot rockets into. The whole time I was there, the skies sat quiet.

“Where else can you go?” the editor asked. Well, I said, I could go to northern Finland. And … you guessed it. Beautiful dark skies, nice saunas, good food, world class cross country skiing, but no major aurora.

Then, on the drive home to Bayfield after a late night flight into Duluth, Minnesota, the sky erupted with northern lights over Lake Superior not a dozen miles from our driveway, the display so vivid we pulled over on the lonely highway and laid flat on our back staring straight up into wonder.

Other than frequent flier miles, what I gained from that experience, and dozens of other cold nights watching a sky that refuses to dance, is that when it comes to the aurora, there is no such thing as a guarantee. But human nature doesn’t sit well with things that can’t be quantified so check any number of aurora prediction apps and you will find them festooned with numbers and acronyms galore that give at least the impression that there is something tangible to use for predictions. For example:

— Coronal Mass Ejections or CMEs are like campfire sparks off the surface of the sun. Depending on their strength, they can take as little as 15-18 hours to cover that immense distance between the sun and the earth or as long as 3 days.

— How fast the CMEs get here depends on the speed of the Solar Wind (400 kilometers/second would be a slow rate while big storms can reach 800 km/second).

— Another important number to watch is the Hemispheric Power. That is the amount of energy in the earth’s atmosphere available to interact with the incoming energy from the sun. It is measured in gigawatts (GW) and for good aurora viewing in the latitudes of the Apostle Islands, look for numbers nearing 100gw.

— As that Solar Wind nears the earth, the IMF (or Interplanetary Magnetic Field) becomes key. It’s orientation is measured in what is known as Bz. Think of a pair of magnets - if they are lined up incorrectly, they repel each other pushing the material from the sun away from the earth. However, if they are aligned correctly, they attract the electrons from the Solar Winds pulling them down along the Earth’s magnetic field where they collide with oxygen and nitrogen in our atmosphere causing the glow of northern lights. In Bz, negative numbers are better (look for -10 or below).

— The strength at which that happens is measured in a general index known as the Kp scale (0 to 9). The higher the number, the stronger the geomagnetic storm and so the further south it may be possible to see the glow of the northern lights. At Kp levels of 0 to 4, it is mostly visible only at higher latitudes. A Kp of 5 (G1 level storms) brings a good chance of aurora to the Apostle Islands and much of northern Wisconsin, at least low along the northern horizon. A Kp of 7 (G3 level) will put the aurora as far south as Chicago and a Kp 9, which would be a major atmospheric disturbance, has made the northern lights visible as far south as Alabama, Kentucky, New Mexico, and even beyond.

(illustration credit: NOAA)

But as much as humans would like to believe otherwise, not everything can be captured by a number or conveniently summed up in an acronym. Where do you put the decimal point in wonder? What scale measures the luminance of surprise on the human soul? Sometimes, the best things catch you completely unaware.

It was June 2013 and I had what only can be described as a RAH (Ridiculous Artistic Hunch). For years I had dreamed of getting a photograph of Honeymoon Rock, a distinctive rock formation just off the north end of Basswood Island under the aurora. It was, even under the best of circumstances, a RLS (Real Long Shot). Everything would have to align — clear skies, northern lights, calm waves, water temperatures high enough to get out of the boat to set up my tripod in the lake, and I would have to find some way to get myself and my camera gear out there (this was before we found our boat the Little Dipper). It was ridiculous. I had no decimal points to back me up. All I had was a hunch and a good friend with a boat.

It was nearly midnight by the time I called Mike Radtke: "Would you get out of bed, launch your boat, and take me three miles out on to Lake Superior in the dark?” His answer was simple, “Sure.” And we were off.

It was like boating in space, the lake so calm the stars reflected as brightly on the water as in the sky, the Rapture II working its way slowly up the shoreline of Basswood Island almost by feel. We rounded the point where we thought Honeymoon Rock would be but couldn’t make it out.

Suddenly, despite there having been no exclamation-pointed headlines in the media, no beeping alerts on any aurora apps, the northern lights appeared and there was Honeymoon Rock, right in front of us. I leapt out of the boat in water up to my chest, set up the tripod with my camera only inches above the lake. I had time for just three 30 second exposures before it faded.

The photograph hung for an entire year in the American Museum of Natural History as part of a 2014 exhibition honoring the 50th anniversary of the National Wilderness Preservation System. Sitting in the Rapture II that night, not a Kp scale or Bz reading anywhere in sight, the photograph glowing from the back of my camera seemed both a tribute to the beauty of the Apostle Islands, and the infinite power of nature to catch us by surprise.

— Jeff Rennicke

(And today, a print of that photo hangs in Mike Radtke’s home as a thank you for being a RGF - a really good friend)

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