With all the buzz about the possibility of strong auroras on the night of August 5th/6th, I was disappointed as sunset rolled around to see our sky filled with clouds. I am always optimistic, however, and as the evening progressed I made 2 to 3 checks every hour to see if the sky was clearing. Sure enough, just before midnight, I noticed a break in the clouds and in that break I saw some nice auroras! I went out the door and headed to my favorite spot to photograph the display. For an hour and a half the sky was filled with dancing lights, some of the best I've ever seen in Northern Minnesota!

Time-lapse video of the Aug. 5, 2011 Aurora Borealis from Burton Campground.

From our geographical location we caught the tail end of this geomagnetic activity. On top of that our skies were cloud filled for a lot of the display. For the most part we observed a lot of diffuse, ill defined aurora, punctuated by moments where you could see some detail. With clouds ever present the sky glowed with an erie ghost like atmosphere. All photos taken with a Canon 5D 24mm f1.4 lens with camera set to daylight colour balance. I should add that the third photo clearly shows the planet Jupiter a little to the right of the Pleiades. I must say Jupiter seemed to be just burning in the sky, very bright, a real highlight for me!

On Friday, August 5 we had thunder storms and then some clearing skies with brilliant Aurora. Light pollution from the city coloured the clouds orange. I photographed the Aurora from 11:00 pm until-2:00 am. I used a Canon 5D Mark II with a 24 mm F1.5 lens with exposures ranging from 1 second to 30 seconds.

The aurora was only faintly visible at our campsite on Lake Wenatchee in Washington. I decided to see if they show up better with my camera, and indeed they did. What was only a faint, indistinct light to the naked eye was purple, pink and blue in the camera. The mountain in the photo doesn't look very big, but this was taken at 11mm focal length. Unfortunately the mountain was directly north of us, which blocked out a good portion of the show. Photo taken with a Nikon D90, Tokina 11-16mm lens, F3.2, ISO 400, 45 second exposure.

Canon 5d Mk II, 16mm, f2.8, ISO 1600, 13s exposure (after dark except when aurora got bright around 11 PM or so). The event started here as a steady glow that transitioned into very bright curtains then more of a quickly pulsating aurora before high clouds moved in after 3 AM.

The auroras were just barely visible to the naked eye here in Utah as a pink glowing dome on the northern horizon. But my camera (a Nikon D5000) was able to make out structure.

at around midnight to 1:00am last night as perdicted the northern lights started to appear they weren't as strong as I thought they might be but the calm night and a lake setting were enough to to capture some nice photos ,taken with a Nikon D7000, F4.0,1000 ISO and a 20 second exposure