Aurora Borealis in Northern Minnesota
Richard Rathe, September 14 2025 (Photography, Science)
I was visiting friends in northern Minnesota and had just finished a good meal. We were all fading fast so I said good night
and headed for my hammock. As my eyes adjusted to the dark I noticed that the sky looked kind of strange—like city glow from a nearby town. Then, on the edge of the glow, I saw the tell-tale green curtains of the Northern Lights!
This was apparently just the beginning of the show. I walked to the far edge of a field for a better view and was rewarded with an entire horizon full of cold fire.
At the peak, about 2/3 of the sky was covered and faint red colors began to show. This included moving sunbeams
radiating out from the zenith!
I took these photos with an iPhone 16 Pro—Handheld! Each exposure was approximately five seconds long. Apparently the phone is able to stich
exposures over time together in the same way it does panoramas. Note the stars in these photos—points not smears. It must discard frames
that would otherwise blur the photo. Amazing!
The lights intensified to the point I could start to see red highlights with my naked eye. The live viewfinder
view on the phone showed both more color and movement! There may even be a little blue (!) showing in this shot…
I eventually retired to my hammock where I had a partial view of the lights as I went to sleep.
For larger versions of the photos above, click on the gallery below. Note that I have not increased the color saturation. The only corrections I used are a light clarity
effect and normalizing the dynamic range.
This is the after-action report
from Space Weather. Apparently I was very much in the right place at the right time!
A fast-moving stream of solar wind hit Earth on Sept. 14th, sparking an unexpectedly strong G3-class geomagnetic storm. Overnight (Sept. 14-15), auroras appeared in the USA as far south as Colorado. …The stream of solar wind responsible for this storm is flowing from a butterfly-shaped hole in the sun's atmosphere. Normally, the stream might cause no more than a G1-class storm, but it has been amplified by the 'Russell-McPherron effect,' which links the magnetic fields of the sun and Earth during weeks around equinoxes.
More to come…
