I have heard it many times: “A CME will hit Earth! Infrastructure will be destroyed!”  I went to Linslaw to image the NGC 4395 galaxy with my SCT.  At the last minute, I packed my DSLR camera and a tripod just in case.  I set up my equipment and readied it for the imaging session.  About 45 minutes after sunset, I fixated on my PC screen and performed the pre-imaging tasks; polar alignment, slewing to the target, running the first autofocus, centering the target and starting the auto guider.  When it was dark enough at about 9:45PM, I started to take subframes with a luminance filter.  The first subframe downloaded after two minutes.  The background appeared very bright.  Perhaps I started too soon?  The second image came in and the background was even brighter!  It was about 10:00PM and I finally looked up and saw a bright cloud to the north.  Then it dawned on me that the aurora was happening and that there would at least be something to see!  The imaging rig continued in futility.  The aurora grew and grew as it moved south toward the zenith.  I started taking pictures with my DSLR.  The imaging run was worthless, but the aurora was unbelievable.  I stayed until about 1:00AM as it quieted down.

Imaging details:

Canon 7D Mark II DSLR
Canon 18 to 55mm lens
ISO 1600
10 second exposures at f/4.0, one exposure per image

What are the true colors of an aurora?  White balance is the key.  Since I saved my images in the RAW format, white balance could be set manually.  It is recommended to set the color temperature between 3500 and 4000K.  The tint can be adjusted to fine tune the colors.  That said, the colors in the images vary greatly.  Are they the “real” colors?  Hard to say.  With my vision, I only saw very faint red and green within mostly gray features.  But the aurora was very dynamic, so the color changes may be close to reality.

Software:  PixInsight to denoise and Photoshop 2024