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Ginny and I had an aurora chase date! Last night was absolutely incredible. At times, we could easily see the aurora with our eyes as it rapidly pulsated and shifted across the sky. Not just red, but green, white, pink and purple. With aurora expected, Ginny and I had a quick barbecue dinner while listening to some bluegrass music outside, and then headed west at dusk. I was worried that any activity would be waning as the CME hit the earth much earlier in the day. We arrived at our first viewing location in Louisa County at 7:44 PM. The sky was glowing to the north with a dull reddish color visible to our eyes. There was also a band of whitish to slightly greenish glow both above and below the red glow. The red glow expanded to almost overhead and also to the east, west and south. At times, faint red columns were visible, but overall not much structure. The aurora areas appeared like swaths of paint. By 8:30 PM, we decided to change to another location because the traffic on the nearby road was getting annoying, and we wanted a different foreground. The aurora display was decreasing. From our new vantage point at 9:00 PM, the aurora appeared as a broad whitish band extending upwards from the horizon similar to distant city lights. Above the whitish band that was increasing in width, the sky was red/pink. Not much internal structure. This was visible to our eyes though not as bright as was appearing on my camera or our phones. To the west, a narrow red isolated column extended upwards from the horizon. As it was getting late, we decided to leave that location to head home. We stopped by our original viewing location at 9:50 PM to adjust some items in the car. I took a quick look, and the aurora seemed to be increasing in intensity. Within a couple of minutes, red columns and spires were rapidly shooting up from the horizon. Another substorm! I scrambled to get the camera set up. The columns rapidly appeared and vanished while shifting. The northern sky was pulsating with blobs of red, white and green. The colors were the most intense naked-eye visible colors that I’ve ever seen with aurora in Virginia. The most intense and structured aurora occurred in a substorm between 9:58 PM and 10:30 PM. The display gradually decreased, and we left by 10:45 PM. There were more substorms later that night and aurora was photographed as far south as Mexico and Cuba. What an amazing evening of aurora viewing! I am still surprised at the intensity of the visible colors during that last substorm. It was a wonderful aurora date night!
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