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How on Earth do I ever even begin to know how to describe this incredible night?, the answer is I don't know, I don't have the descriptive powers to articulate the visual appearance and emotions which happened on the night of October 10th/11th 2024. If you never saw this aurora during it's absolute best after midnight then any attempt on my part to explain it would be met with scorn and even whispers of exaggeration, you simply had to have been there. If you did see it then you will agree with everything I just said and would rank this within the 'display of a life time' category.
Thanks to solar maximum we have been experiencing a remarkable year of aurora activity with countless large sunspots peppering the solar disk and numerous solar flares and their assiociated CMEs. I personally observed many auroras over this action-packed period, even the G1 events seemed better looking than usual with geomagnetic storms in the G1 to G2 category producing extremely photogenic shows which caught me off guard, so good I was able to capture them easily by drone. However it was the night of May 10th which changed everything, that night we got treated to a severe G5 storm and perfect clear skies, that event was the best aurora over the last 20 years, in fact, I ranked it as perhaps the 3rd best of my life, it was visually spectacular and very photogenic, we honestly didn't think we could get better than that for a very long time.
My friends I chatted among ourselves about the prospect of another big event, some were skeptical, however I wasn't. I felt fairly confident we could get another G4 or G5 in the near future if this activity continued as it was, however the greatest question was always would we get a clear night to see another big show?, could lightning strike twice, could we get another epic event this year?, with the sun at solar maximum anything was possible but what I wasn't expecting was an event to happen so soon which would beat the May 10th show and happen during the arrival of our best comet in years. During this week the solar disk sported several very large active regions, I had been observing them visually in my 90mm ETX and thought to myself that big one approaching the meridian is going to blow. Sure enough a few hours later the most powerful X-class flare of the entire solar cycle happened, a CME was heading our way and another glancing blow CME was following behind from a source inside the limb.
The big CME was a damp squib, it was slower than expected, diffuse, and seemed to not really hit us at all, more of a brush past, the Bz stayed N anyway so that killed any chance of a good display. The other CME did the same but did fire up G1 conditions, but amazingly the Bz went to -10 and a very nice aurora happened taking us all by surprise. I was fogged out here however I got the drone in the air and managed several aerial images from above the fog, the red beams filled the wide angle field, it was actually really cool. Then news arrived that another powerful X-class flare had just happened and it came from that big spot group located bang on the meridian facing directly at Earth. Follow up STEREO and SOHO imagery showed a bright full halo CME moving at a velocity far in excess of 1000km/sec. This CME was moving so fast it would hit, not in two to three days, but in little over one day! its density and speed and orientation all suggested that a severe geomagnetic storm was possible, it was then that my excitement levels began to ramp up.
NOAA issued a forecast for G4 storming however they didh't rule out G5 activity and based on their timing it looked like Europe and the UK could be perfectly placed for the main show. I'm always nervous when NOAA shows the exact hour of these hits as I know they can be out by 7 hours or more either way, it is far from an exact science. It was time to study the weather forecast, it was obvious from a casual glance that we needed it to hit on the 10th for if it arrived late we would be clouded out for the 11th, so the 10th simply had to work out. The night of the 10th wasn't exactly 100% certain either, from looking at the models it looked like there would be too much cloud over the north coast, some of what would work its way inland later, but the best location for clear skies, at least until midnight, looked to be inland over the Sperrins, Mid-Ulster, Tyrone, and Co. Down and Armagh. This meant we needed that CME to hit during the afternoon for the timing to work out with clear skies in the evening, it was a tall order but sometimes miracles do happen.
Over the last week leading up to this event I hadn't been sleeping well in anticipation of comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS which would be appearing in our skies any night now. I was so fixated on this event for 17 months that it was all that I could think about, and now with a severe geomagnetic storm on the way at the same time I just had to forget about sleep and peaceful thoughts, I sensed something major was coming and I couldn't settle. In fact, since October 10th looked clear I would be making an effort to hunt down the comet before going aurora chasing, it was a very exciting time indeed. I expected a day with suspense and apprehenscion about when the CME would hit but I was surprisingly calm and focused, I felt confident this was happening. Then at 17.00, only two hours later than one of the model predicitions, the CME hit, and hit hard. The ACE and DSCOVR spacecraft at the L1 points recorded a major impact with an extreme S pointing Bz component, we could expect effects on Earth within the hour. This was happening, as soon as it got dark a severe geomagnetic storm would be visible.
We chose Lough Fea as our observing location because it was located inside the best clear sky window in Mid-Ulster so plans were made and a group of us all agreed to meet up to experience this together. Nigel McFarland, Colleen Webb, John Fagan and Paul Martin, we agreed to meet at the lough around 19.00 LT. Meanwhile Roisin and Rhua and I walked to the top of Tullyhogue Fort outside Cookstown, we watched the sunset then scanned for the comet. The sky was beautifully clear thanks to a cool air mass but after relentless searching the comet was never seen thanks to low cloud on the horizon. We rushed back down again and back home so I could pack the gear into the van, it was still bright twilight outside but I saw the aurora, only a few stars out yet there was this large pink cloud glowing high in the N sky, I was shocked it was visible already, this was going to be a good show, I couldn't wait to get on location.
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I drove as fast as I legally could along the back road then met up with the guys. We then walked along the trail surrounding Lough Fea and took up a position standing on the rocks facing N over the lough, we hoped we might be able to get the aurora reflecting on the water once the breeze died down later, that was the plan anyway. The sky was still bright but yet bursting through the twilight was the aurora, and it looked strange, a portion of it was hazy and devoid of any structure yet the sector in front of us took on the form of pink and red rays, it looked like the sky was on fire near Arcturus, the red fountain of light looked like a volcanic eruption.
It was then that we began to make out crazy structures behind us to the E and SE and others forming to the W, this was shaping up to be like the May 10th aurora all over again with the best forms visible in areas of the sky you don't normally associate with the aurora, often the N can be the least interesting place during a severe storm and our view of the other sky sectors was obscured by trees and other obstacles. I wasn't happy at all, the location wasn't working out and I didn't even like the view to the N as I was trying to avoid tree branches sticking across the field of view. I got frustrated quickly and I wasn't the only one, I just couldn't settle, I needed a better view of the sky in all directions, Nigel was feeling the same way and suggested moving while we still had time, part of me didn't want to move in case I missed anything but I also knew that if I stayed here I wouldn't be happy with my images at all. So before the sky got fully dark we chanaged location and three car loads of us took to the back roads around the lough in search of a better view.
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As we drove along the W side of the lough I spotted a layby where I had filmed the amazing June 25th NLC display before and decided on an instinct to stop there to test out the view, I was eager to start shooting immediately, Colleen pulled in behind me. Nigel and John drove about 1km on up the road and found another position there, we would team up with them later. The night turned dark and the first quarter moon was low in the sky and about to set, we got cameras set-up and I began shooting a time lapse then Colleen and I got fully dark adapted to enjoy the show, we would stay at this location for several hours.
At first I was a little concerned by the aurora, yes there was no question this was a massive display, in fact, it looked like the actual leading edge of the auroral oval was not only at the zenith, but passing beyond it into the S sky sector, it looked like the entire oval had become displaced over mid northern latitudes, but there was little in the way of structure. I didn't say it to Colleen at the time but I wasn't impressed, but later she would voice her same concerns too. This was a very strange aurora, it looked like a massive area of haze or auroral fog, as a result the overall display looked very diffuse with a low surface brightness, it was easy with the naked eye but I would say there would have been members of the public looking at the sky who were not trained aurora observers who probably didn't see anything at all.
The display was notable for its lack of vertical rays, there where a few here and there but they were faint and soft and that auroral fog made everything look low contrast. The storm was already a G3 and intensfying but I really expected more, I'm a stucture person so to me this almost was a complete let down for photography. Conor McDonald and I had seen these auroral fogs before back in the 2000s and they stayed like that all night so I was starting to loose heart. The above image is 15mm wide angle on full frame looking W-NW, there were green and subtle purple colours but it just didn't float my boat. We gave it another hour and even though it waxed and waned I was starting to get annoyed and so was Colleen, this wasn't the show we had expected, and annoyingly I had burned through a lot of battery power on two cameras time lapsing this phase, I should have held back and waited, but I was worried cloud would come in and I wanted something to show for the night.
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Despite this frustration we knew that patience and dedication were needed, we also knew from experience that the aurora never stays static, it's an ever changing transient event that can suddenly take you by surprise and I can gurantee you that surprise will happen when you turn your back or go inside so we remained committed. After a little yelling at the sky and a few mugs of tea later it seemed like the aurora was listening and began to stirr. The N was devoid of much interest but in stark contrast the W and E sectors were coming to life. Within the 'fog' what looked like a hundred green rays suddenly emerged within seconds and grew in height until they reached the zenith, finally some structure.
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The E began to steal the show, a fountain of vivid naked eye red appeared in this area over the wind turbines near Slieve Gallion, those reds and pinks were stunning to the naked eye, at this stage the aurora was so large and bright it was wiping out many of the stars from the sky. I was shooting the W with the Canon 5D Mark IV at 15mm and E with the Canon 600D at 10mm. I would set up on this nice quiet country road and begin a time lapse, then a car would come along and ruin it, the road got very busy, it looked like aurora chasers too, I had never seen anything like that here before. I would
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We had a full blown storm with greens, reds, and oranges all at once, the E was in fire near the Pleiades. That's Colleen Webb in the frame, the beams towered far higher than the camera frame. This aurora was so big that my 15mm on full frame looked and felt more like 50mm on crop sensor, really difficult to do it justice. I'm not a fan of fish eye lenses but only those would have done it justice. Lens issues aside we were now getting a great show, Colleen and I yelled with delight as beams dominated the entire sky, it was hard to believe we had seen such an epic show back on May 10th and now we were seeing it all over again, what an incredible time to be into astronomy.
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The W began going nuts with deep crimson colours, we had some low level cloud passing through, we thought we were going to be clouded out for the remainder of the night but it amazingly it stayed clear, the clouds actually added to the contrast of this scene.
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Same area but now the camera is pointing directly overhead, it looked like a corona was trying to form, the rays were so tall they were beginning to converge in this area. Wait a minute what's that? the green and red rays was the classic aurora, then there was a gap with stars, then another dark red straight feature, could these be more rays or was it a SARS arc?, I wasn't sure at this time but we decided to wait for it to evolve.
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Between these high crimson curtains either side of us was the N which was punctuated by foggy green beams, that's me setting up the other camera on the road side. The night was quiet, still, mild, and eerie, we could hear yells off in the distance from John reacting to the aurora.
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I took a break and poured myself another brew as it was starting to get quite chilly. I said to Colleen every time I have tea while on a shoot something cool always happens, and sure enough after a few sips the W began to inensify and confirm my growing suspicions. That red band isolated from the main display had a deep red colour, it was fainter to the eye than the principle aurora structures and it seemed to cross the zenith from W to E where it blended in with the rays on the other side. I was certain this was a SARS arc, not part of the aurora itself but generated by the aurora's presence superheating the upper atmosphere's ring current system.
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Facing N, I couldn't resist an image with the van in the frame for the memories.
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Back to the W, this was definitely the largest SARS arc I've ever seen, very broad, it was detectable by eye. The activity calmed down again so we chilled out for a while, it was just after 23.00. Colleen took a look at the models and announced with great delight that the Bz was -44!!!, I don't mean this was rite now, but it meant in the near future the Bz would be that far S. The data came from ACE and DSCOVR spacecraft which meant this extremely negative Bz would be with us in less than an hour, possibly as early as 45 min's. This was what we had been waiting for, we already had a substantial aurora already but with a Bz of -44 coming things were about to turn epic fast.
We turned off the cameras to preserve our remaining battery power and warmed up inside our cars, I had another brew. This next outburst would be it, this was the final chance of getting the structure images I wanted. Nigel rang, we chatted about everything we had seen so far then Nigel invited Colleen and I up to join them, it was a good idea, it would be nice if all of us where together for this next outburst. We began driving along the narrow back roads and eventually arrived at Nigel and John's location and got the camera's set up.
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Suddenly the sky went crazy the moment the cameras were ready, it happened quicker than I expected, that extreme negative Bz had arrived at Earth and the aurora went absolutely nuts. Looking E over the tower on Slieve Gallion, all of us were stuck for words, it looked like an aurora from Iceland had come to N. Ireland. I don't even know what you would call this structure, they are not exactly rays, they have gaps in between and seemed to flare, nature's version of a cluster bomb.
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I was lifting up the camera shooting E then behind me the W would go insane so I would turn it around and shoot that direction, I was like a headless Chicken, both sides of the sky were jaw dropping and the structure and magnitude seemed to be ramping up by the minute. This was the W with the 600D at 10mm. I love that dark red lane between the green streaming down through the Summer Triangle. Low in the sky orange and yellow colours were forming, this was brilliant, I had to settle myself and do something productive, even a short time lapse of this outburst would be worth having so I set up the 600D on the side of the road where Colleen and John where shooting then I shot with the full frame for stills for a while on the mountain beside Nigel. Our heads were constantly panning from one side of the sky to the other, then the two converged and formed a corona.
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Camera tilted directly overhead as the corona manifested from nowhere and just like on May 10th it took on many forms including biological shapes, the green and red colours were easy with the naked eye, the corona would be static and lazy one minute then flicker and pulse the next, then almost fading away then jumping back larger than ever, it was amazing to watch. I began shooting a time lapse of this with the 5D Mark IV, these forms don't happen often so any corona is worth documenting above everything else.
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The W-NW was like Iceland again, honestly, if there was snow on the ground here I bet you wouldn't know the difference. Almost like picket fence structure to the NW and all the while that broad dark red SARs arc lurked within the outer periphery of the oval.
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A few minutes later the exact same area of sky looked like this, it was like heavenly rays streaming down from some celestial kingdom, the green and red colours were absolutely striking and beyond belief with purple appearing behind the red. We were all yelling with delight, I won't repeat some of the words used.
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Corona on celestial steroids, honestly the naked eye colours were like what you would normally see on long exposure images, they were mind blowing. All those people on social media who say you can't see the colours with the naked eye need to go to specsavers. This was a full-on silent colour explosion in the sky that flickered, pulsated, flared, I don't even know how to describe it, you really had to be there.
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Panning camera straight down from the overhead corona to give you a sense of scale
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Then it got even better! same area of sky a few moments later, this time I brought the camera onto the marshland on the mountain, you can see our cars in the frame and the person in the orange jacket is John, his coat matched the aurora. The orange and yellow aurora colours are caused by mixing of the visual green, red and pinks.
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Meanwhile the corona went bonkers, sorry I can't find any more descriptive words to use. The naked eye pinks and crimson were astonishing, just mind blowing, Mother Nature at her absolute finest.
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15mm vertical of the W/NW, we were all screaming, then silent lost in our own thoughts, then yelling again, at one moment speechless and the next filling the air with so many words but none of them made any sense, it was a real struggle to articulate verbally how we felt, we wanted to express those feelings but it was beyond our ability. Some of us even admitted to feeling emotionally affected, but I tell you one thing I was glad we where all here together to experience one of the best auroras of our lives.
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We where surrounded 360 degrees by this epic aurora, our jaws where on the floor, this was 100% in your face unbelievable. It actually looked like we where being attacked from space, the sky actually had that look to it, as if an invisible force field was shielding us yet the shield seemed precarious, this was a full-on assault from the sun. We all agreed on one thing, and if you didn't see this then you would find it hard to believe, the naked eye view was far better than any of our images, digitial imagery just didn't do it justice at all. I was shooting exposures between 1 and 2 seconds yet the rays were blurred due to the high speed motion, this was crazy, only the eye could perceive this magnificent spectacle.
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The corona did it's silent detonation once more, brighter than ever before, and almost blowing out the images in my time lapse. The rose pinks and scarlet reds were beyond belief. I took a lot of fast exposures showing the evolution of this corona and every image looks different, all of them are cool in their own way with dramatic colour variations and structure, I have too many to post on here so I have selected only a few samples otherwise I could have one hundred images in this report.
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Panning around to the E with Auriga and Gemini containing Mars and that bright star is planet Jupiter. When you look at these images it gives a false impression of vertical rays going upward, that was not the naked eye reality, to us looked like charged particles raining DOWN at high velocity towards the surface which accentuated that feeling of being attacked by the aurora. It really did look like the visual manifestion of charged particles interacting with the Earth's magnetosphere, it actually had that electrical look to it. I've only ever seen this happen once before in my life.
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This was like a dream come true and we were living it rite now, the ultimate aurora display, this was the calibre of display we all fantasied about, some day in the future the big one was going to happen yet here it was blowing our minds. You can actually sense the speed in this image, talk about making you feel small and humble, it really doesn't get much better than this. I was so awestruck that doing proper photography and thinking of time lapse was just beyond my senses, I was too overwhelmed to concentrate, I was just reacting with the camera, muscle memory taking over, my mind and heart where detached from the physical process, the body was doing the movements but my mind was on another frequency. I don't want to sound cheesy but this was as close to a spiritual experience as you can get, we all felt transcended, maybe it was some kind of out of body experience, it was just so surreal.
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Orion the Hunter could be seen rising in the E into the aurora. All my camera batteries were almost depleted, even multi tasking between two cameras was too much, I was completely distracted by the visual spectacle. This display was so large and impressive I would have needed at last three DSLRs with wide angle lens, perhaps even four to do it justice. A quick peak at the charts confirmed the Bz had dropped to -46, astonishing, this was an extreme geomagnetic storm.
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Even in the dakrness of this location the aurora was causing the ground to glow red. The N sky had been clear and devoid of much action then suddenly everything changed when rays filled in that sector too, they where everywhere. After 02.00 the activity seemed to ease back to 'normal' levels, which on an ordinary night would have us on the edge of our seats, then we packed up the gear and collected our thoughts. You know that feeling when you witness something incredible in nature when you get that buzz, that internal and external glow from nature, well we all had it, we felt charged, a shift had taken place, a transformation, we had just seen the very best of the best. Honestly how can this display be surpassed? only with buzzing phone lines and power grid black outs, next up on the scale would be a Carrington event, I'm half joking here but quite serious too.
I made it home for 02.30, the aurora went on all night long, I never really slept, even in bed I kept seeing the walls and ceilings glowing red, I thought I was loosing it, but it was some kind of visual imprint in my brain. It wasn't until later when I got talking to Paul Martin that he said he experienced the same phenomena, a red glow in his eyes at home. Paul had also been aurora chasing in Iceland where he witnessed an epic display and he confided in me that the October 10th N. Ireland aurora was just as good if not better than Iceland!
How would I rank this aurora?, this was my 198th display since my first observation on August 1998. During the solar maximum which followed on the years ahead I had the pleasure of witnessing many incredible aurora displays which became the stuff of legend, sightings which I held in high regard with a great sense of pride, sightings which I talked about with other modern day observers who never really believed me, from auroras visible every night of the week back to back to insane displays with motion beyond description, even an aurora eating its way through clouds one night, these were all unforgettable experiences. With complete honestly I would rate the October 10th display as the second best of my life!
There's only one display which beats it, I can't recall the year however I know I have records of it in my observing log books. That aurora went from epic to insanity to so intense I was actually ducking to the ground as a reflex to the incredible violent motion taking place aloft. Visually this display was similar to the October 10th show, but it was greater in magnitude and definition, it also had vibrant naked eye purples with the whites, greens, reds and pinks. However it was the motion of this one which made this night top tier, that corona was staggering, and so was the vertical motion to the rays, I can tell you about it in person sometime. That being said the October 10th aurora was rite at the top among the finest I've ever seen, sustained madness on a scale we rarely never see from N. Ireland, this aurora was so strong it was observed from Mexico!
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I was on an absolute high, then a few nights later this happened. The brightest naked eye comet in 27 years since Hale-Bopp appeared called C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. On the night of October 14th the clouds parted and from the summit of Slieve Gallion I watched this vistor with a naked eye tail 20 degrees in length which blew me away complimented with a rare anti-tail (read the report). Seeing that aurora then this comet in close succession really made this one of the best night sky events in years. October has been a remarkable month for Astronomy, what an exciting time to be alive. Thanks very much for reading.
Martin McKenna
