Aurora Borealis. Here?

In 2025 and 2026 we had something unusual happen. The Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis was visible in Colorado.

I’ve seen videos of the lights coursing across the sky in waves. The ones here in Colorado weren’t as agile.

The effect is caused by “a severe geomagnetic storm pushed charged solar particles much farther south than normal.” Normally only the northern most hemisphere can see the lights, most times they’re visible to the naked eye.

Here in Conifer we got lucky and the skies with no moon so as darkness fell, I waited.

Yah. Nothing.

I didn’t know the only way to see the colors was with help from a camera or phone with high resolution.

My Nikon cameras are pretty much on permanent hiatus. Their batteries are dead, they need cleaned, very, very badly and though I know the settings to make gorgeous images, I had to use my iPhone and do a timed exposure to get the colors.

I took the pictures and things began to reveal themselves. As in the neighbors always have lots of lights on. The same with the former neighbors further down Sandy Lane.

Clouds add interest but I think the clear skies makes for more intense color saturation.

More than once the stars were visible.

From the bedroom window I braced the phone against the sill and glass to hold as still as possible. Each image yielded different colors. I’m not sure why that happens. But the result was pretty cool.

I don’t know if they’re something I’ll ever see again but at least I got to see them up here at the Bar B.