The night of 10-11 May 2024 will never be forgotten. It was very special and brought the most severe geomagnetic storm since the Halloween solar storms of 2003.
How this all began was there was an active region of sunspots, known as AR3664, which was 15 times wider than Earth. A series of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from this sunspot region, which included enormous blobs of plasma, were directed towards the Earth leading to prospects for a big show to come. Nothing could have prepared us though for what was going to happen. It was the culmination of these CMEs all firing at once rather than any individual ones being noteworthy. NOAA had released its first severe G4 watch since 2005 but the solar storm was upgraded to a G5 on the day it happened. That’s the highest level and happens on only 4 days per solar cycle on average – that’s 11 years! Solar cycle 24 (2008-2019) did not have even one.
What’s more amazing is how widespread clear skies were across Ireland and the time of year it occurred – near the middle of May. There’s very little pure darkness available at this time of year as we near the summer solstice in just over a month. Astronomical twilight in Dublin wasn’t to end until after half past midnight and the extreme north coast of Ireland was already under permanent twilight. The storm was able to push through the still relatively bright sky and was visible to the naked eye throughout. There was a 11% illuminated moon as well that wouldn’t set until after 1am here in the east of Ireland, a few days after the new moon phase of May 8th. That wasn’t likely to be much of a hindrance though and in fact it made for some lovely scenes with the earthshine adding to the landscape and experience. The storm coincided with a fine spell of weather and the most clear night of the period in Ireland, we were extremely lucky. Parts of the south weren’t as lucky with some low cloud or fog developing but these places also had a big aurora display in April 2023 that most of the country didn’t get to see due to cloud cover.
I brought along two friends for the ride in the car as it’s not something they’d want to miss and they don’t have access to a car. I planned to go to Ballynafagh Church in Kildare. This is a composition I’ve wanted to get for a while since many have done it and it looked like a perfect location for aurora. I also wanted to do Maiden Tower in Mornington, Meath so I was stumped on which one to go for. I left my Instagram followers to vote on which one to go to. Ballynafagh Church unanimously won the vote by a significant difference. I think this was the right idea as Ballynafagh had less cloud cover and was overall a better location in my opinion though I will still be doing Mornington for a future aurora display.
We arrived at Ballynafagh Church at 22:46. There were already quite a few there but I managed to get parking easily. It was important to arrive relatively early to do so. Also unknowingly, it was important to arrive early to capture the event in its entirety as it was already starting to show itself. The image below was the first photo I captured when I stepped out of the car as I arrived. There are already signs of the auroral oval being visible, albeit relatively faint but the sky was still bright. We were in for quite a night clearly.
As the sky dimmed and the moon got lower in the sky, the show just kept getting more and more extreme with my whole 360 view covered by the display from north to south, east to west. It didn’t matter where one looked, you got something. This was nuts. I have been only capturing auroras since March 2023 so I don’t have much events to reference and compare but judging by the reports of others who had been doing this for years longer than me, they had never seen anything like this in Ireland and some have even gone as far to say that it bet the Halloween 2003 events. Crazy to hear this as I have been asking for a repeat or an event on this scale for a while and the fact it actually happened perfectly, what can one say to that. I was only 2 years of age when the 2003 events happened so obviously have no memories of it.
After some fiddling with the settings and composition, I left my Nikon D7500 camera with shutter release to capture a time lapse for the rest of the night whilst I talked to my friends, enjoyed the display and mess around with my phones. I had a second DSLR, a Nikon D3500, but I gave it to my friend to capture his shots for the night. If I had that or better yet… a second camera with much superior low light capabilities as the D3500 is an entry level DSLR with a relatively small sensor, I would have captured more variety in my shots such as the aurora corona overhead or getting more creative but that’s the compromises you got to make sometimes. You can’t have it all. I will leave you with some of my images below as well as a link to the time lapse on my YouTube channel which took my M1 iMac 12 hours to get processed between editing all the individual frames, making sure they’re equal or similarly exposed and denoising each still as I despise grain.
Pushing the DJI Mini 3 Pro drone to its limits with maxed out pro settings – ISO-6400 and a 2 second exposure time. Don’t think it took a liking to it. This is after denoising too with a lot of noise and artifacts still shown here. Makes me long for a Mavic 3 with its micro four thirds sensor and low light capabilities. I’ve seen some impressive shots of capturing the aurora with it.
All the following images below were taken with my iPhone 13 Pro Max and captured in Apple ProRaw for the maximum post processing capabilities. Never underestimate your phone’s ability to capture quality photos!
I didn’t get home until 4 o’clock after dropping friends home. I barely had any time to sit down as I was back out in half an hour to capture the sunrise. It was the morning of Darkness Into Light. I was very tired but with a beautiful morning in store, I couldn’t sit around and waste it. I went to Newbridge Demesne in Donabate as it was a misty morning and wanted to get a bucket list shot of the park. It was a rare opportunity as the park is closed this hour of the morning and was likely the only time I was going to get a chance to capture the shot so I did. I got it. Two bucket list shots marked off in 6 hours.
I am still recovering from it all.
