During the solar storm on Tuesday night, I was curious to see what was going on in the sky. I went outside after dark to see if I could spot anything. With the naked eye, I saw nothing. But when I took a three second exposure with my phone, this is what I could see:

It was a partly cloudy night, so everything was diffused in this fantastical way.

Two of my friends and I have a Torah class on Tuesday nights. When they arrived, I started showing them what I could see in pictures with my phone. We decided to call a field trip and headed out to the river to get a much larger view of the sky. I live close up by the mountains and my sky view is limited.

We got some good pictures with phones, but nothing really dramatic. You could not see anything at all by just looking at the sky. It was kinda disappointing.

However, when we got home I continued to take pictures and ended up capturing this from my front yard...

I did not edit this picture. ... Wow.

And here is one later in the evening...

It seems so odd that this was going on above our heads, but without a phone to capture just three seconds of exposure, it stayed hidden.

It makes you curious about what other wonders we are missing because our eyes don't have the literal bandwidth to perceive them.

I am so grateful that I got to experience this night with my friends. It was so much more special to share it with others.

And though these things are beautiful, it is not a good sign for our planet. We were only able to observe [with help] these aurora, because our magnetic field has been so weakened.

You can learn more about that here: