Wow, what a night! And STEVE paid us a rare visit.

An amazing night of Aurora over Alaska.  We had a very rare visitor as well.  STEVE.  Steve stands for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement.   This auroral phenomenon has been debated back and forth for years by scientists.  Until very recently most didn't think it existed, but just in the past several months NASA has concluded that it does exist.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/mystery-of-purple-lights-in-sky-solved-with-help-from-citizen-scientists

This is only the second time in 9 years that I've seen it here in Bear Valley.  It looks like a river of light and energy that stays in one place for a long time as opposed to a normal aurora display which moves and dances and changes pretty rapidly.  Last night, STEVE ran from horizon to horizon well south of the faint aurora that was on the northern horizon from around 11:55 pm until 12:30 am this morning.

Then at around 1:15 am the sky exploded with brilliant aurora.  Bright greens, pinks, and magenta filled the northern half of the sky until around 2:45 am.   A wonderful display.  

A pretty decent Aurora show early this morning.

Finally!  We got some half-way decent aurora here in Anchorage.  It's been far too long since we've had clear skies when there's been aurora so this was a nice treat.  Shot between 2 am and 5 am.  Pretty active display that would come and go.  None of the patterns lasted very long.  Fun to shoot.