The night of the 10/11 October 2024, freakishly bang on 5 months since the historic geomagnetic storm of May 2024, was another special one with an amazing aurora borealis display over the mid-latitudes including here in Ireland courtesy of a G4 geomagnetic storm that just failed to fulfil criteria for a G5. Despite this, it was no less beautiful with a phenomenal outburst around midnight IST where the display became visible for a short period of time in all directions. The 360 view of the aurora lasted significantly longer in the May event but it wasn’t as bright or as colourful as this one was. The detail in the colours using the naked eye was nothing short of astonishing as I am sure those of you who got to experience it will agree.
How did this come about? Was it HAARP conducting experiments? Nope, absolutely not. It was the result of a massive, extremely fast full halo CME directly impacting the earth fired from a long duration X1.8 solar flare travelling up to a speed of around 1800 km/s on the morning of 9th October. For reference, the prime CME that would lead to the May 2024 event travelled at a speed of around 950 km/s whilst the infamous Carrington event of September 1859 was estimated at 2350 km/s. As always, impact from the CME was uncertain but it was forecast to reach earth between the afternoon of the 10th and the afternoon of the 11th October. Widespread clear skies were forecast for Ireland on the night of the 10th, sounded all too good to be true especially seeing how extremely lucky we already were with the May event which coincided with the clearest night of the entire month and during a lovely period of weather – a rarity in what has been a cloudy 2024 even by Ireland standards. Well the CME impact was felt in the mid to late afternoon hours of the 10th with a very fast solar wind speed peaking over 800 km/s at DSCOVR. Excitement was quickly building, we just now needed the orientation of the interplanetary magnetic field (known as the Bz) to play ball and allow the storm to develop and enhance auroral activity for lower latitudes. After a bit of instability at the shock wave, the Bz played ball and was south for most of the night including sustaining around -40 nT for a few hours from 2200 UTC which is a sign of very bright aurora displays developing. However, nothing could have prepared us for what was to happen around midnight.
For the May event I had gone to Ballynafagh Church and the location was stunning for it but I limited myself to just leaving the camera to capture for most of it which meant many of images weren’t varied and didn’t really stand out. You have to make the decision whether to do a focus on a time lapse for maximum engagement as videos tend to do well now especially with short form content platforms such as TikTok or you do multiple compositions for either yourself or you hope some of them blow up to become popular and sell. I had asked my Instagram followers what would they do hypothetically if we got another aurora in line with May 2024 strength out of the two. More said they would do multiple compositions. I took this on board and planned to do multiple compositions with different locations if the event were to become massive like expected – NOAA had issued a G4 watch (the second time this year and reminder that the May one had been the first since 2004!).
With the stats looking good, it was time to decide on what to do. I wanted to challenge myself and go to the south side of Dublin which is not something I’d normally do because usually you head north to get away from the light pollution that would fade out the visibility of the aurora display especially by naked eye but also camera. The southside coast of Dublin has many composition possibilities that would be perfect for my goal. Around half 7pm on 10th October, I made my way out to Sandymount Strand and there it was. The aurora borealis was starting to appear faintly through the twilight and light pollution already. I tried getting the reflection of Poolbeg, I mean this is a mandatory composition to capture when you come to Sandymount right? Even better this side of the chimneys have their new coat of paint which definitely makes them pop in the image. I always seem to struggle with focus and the 10-20mm lens here on the strand so it’s slightly out of focus.
After around 15-20 minutes, I made my way out to my next location… the Forty Foot in Sandycove intending to meet up with my friend who is also weather obsessed and have done auroras with before both in November 2023 and May 2024. The auroral oval was nicely bright and visible over the promontory though there wasn’t much sign of pillar activity until I was finishing up getting ready to go to the next location just around the corner at Bullock Harbour.
There was not a soul to be seen at Bullock Harbour making it an ideal location to capture. The sky was getting ready to explode when we arrived with the oval rising. Red pillars were visible to the ENE that just got brighter and eventually the sky was lit up. Pillars were overhead.
The next location after that was the other harbour in Dalkey, Coliemore Harbour. In contrast to Bullock Harbour, Coliemore was jam packed with people. It was difficult to get a good shot as a result without people stepping in your way. My favourite shot from it is unfortunately slightly blurry due to focus and camera movement, it was clearly not stable enough. Oh well, it can’t all be straightforward and perfection. Still nice to see the aurora here with the light pollution.
After that it was time for the real challenge and experiment – walking out to the Poolbeg Lighthouse at the end of the Great South Wall with the hopes of getting something. The problem with Poolbeg Lighthouse is it does not face northward and there is no way to adjust ourselves to get a northward view with the lighthouse in frame without going into deep waters of the Irish Sea so we were hinging on something special to occur. I joined another friend who I have been doing a lot of successful shoots with since the beginning of summer 2024. On the way down the wall, the massive outburst I mentioned previously kicked in. The aurora was visible from pretty much every direction. It was so bright and the red colours were intense to the naked eye. May wasn’t this intense to the naked eye despite lasting longer with the 360 degree views.
Many of my Great South Wall shots came out very soft which I did not realise until I came home and put them on the computer with the bigger screen. Some were purely down to focus which was an error on my part but others, including my favourite shot of the night and the one that has blown up on social media of Poolbeg Lighthouse (the first one below), were due to the lens which is not good but it’s the only wide angle I have wide enough to get the composition I want at the moment until I can invest so have to make do. Nonetheless, I was extremely happy to have at least captured it in some form or fashion and it was my personal favourite shot I have taken.
This was unbelievable and impeccable timing that the peak of the event coincided with the one that took the most effort having to walk down to the lighthouse.
The display faded a lot and that meant it was time to move on to the next location before another outburst occurs. It should be noted that at no point did it get nearly as bright as that crazy moment at Poolbeg but it showed throughout the night in one way or another. We went to Howth where we wanted to get some bright pillars bang in line with the lighthouse. This is tricky because the part of the pier one has to stand on has awful light pollution from a few lamp posts that can give lens flares and casts an ugly bright green glow on the water below. I think we came out fine in the end with the shots we managed. The lighthouse looks a bit distorted in the first shot mind.
Once we got that shot then it was onto one final location after a long night. By this point it was around 5am. The final location in mind was Portmarnock – first trying out the promontory High Rock and then by the beach with the martello and the red kiosk. There were pillars appearing at High Rock but not a lot. The light pollution in Portmarnock is quite bad so it was a challenge without a strong aurora to capture much. Was able to catch some pillars before finally leaving it there. What a night.
Over 10 hours of shooting and driving to locations. I’ve never done anything like that but think it was worth it to make the most of this special night.
Amazingly, this geomagnetic storm was only the 6th most intense since 1996 with 4 from Solar Cycle 23 (from 1996 to 2008) and May 2024 being more powerful but as mentioned, one thing May 2024 didn’t have was that outburst around midnight. The naked eye experience of that will be remembered forever fondly and I feel sorry for anyone who says images are fake or didn’t get to see it because I am sure many would be embarrassed about the stuff they’re saying if they got to see it themselves away from light pollution. Patience and adjusting your eyes to the night sky are of utmost importance, that includes being away from your phone screen.
Who knows when the next time will be that we get another aurora on this level and combined with clear skies again? We will have more auroras most certainly but will need to go to a dark spot away from light pollution with an unobstructed northern horizon generally. We’re a long way from the solar minimum phase of the solar cycle so here’s to some more nights to remember!
Thank you for reading and if you got to experience this event, I hope you enjoyed or had the time of your life. I certainly did.