Aurora Borealis in Germany

A childhood dream of mine has always been to see the aurora borealis. The only problem is that it would mean having a winter vacation in Sweden, Finland, Norway or Island. My „subtropical husband“ is not too excited about this idea, though.

Sunday night I read about a strong sun storm and that people have been able to see the northern lights near Germany‘s coast on that evening. Due to a big sun eruption, Monday was supposed to be even better for photography and possibly visible aurora.

Lots of research later, I knew exactly where I could have the best chances to see, or at least photograph, the lights. I knew where to find spots without clouds, I knew where to find spots with little light pollution and I knew how strong the geomagnetic storm would be. The G-scale and the KP-index were very helpful, you should look this data up before you hunt for northern lights.

This is a map from yesterday evening. Polar lights were theoretically photographable everywhere in Germany. EVERYWHERE. That‘s the green color. The yellow color indicates slight visibility with the bare eyes. Red indicates strong visibility and purple shows bright lights.

I drove for 30 minutes and found myself underneath a beautiful clear sky with lots of stars. I could not make out anything for a while, though. After a while I thought I was able to make out a slight glow on the horizon and perhaps even some beams, but in the beginning I thought it was just light pollution. Well, I was wrong.
Do you see the slight red tones in this photo?

After some slight editing it was much more visible:

I will put the rest into a little gallery right beneath this text. While I am not sure about how to edit these pictures yet and if I am happy with them on a technical level, a childhood dream came true. I was literally jumping up and down in pure joy after every good photo I took. This was an amazing experience and I hope to see them again at some point.

By the way: The whole thing lasted for just around 45 minutes. The temperatures were below 0°C and I was freeeezing! My old Canon EOS 600D did not die on me though, which made me very happy.