Tim, If you find yourself getting pillars in the future, double the iso and halve the shutter time. Those pillars move around quite a bit, and the more definition you can get in them, the higher the impact.
Very unusual to see a display without green colors. The pink/purple color comes from nitrogen excitation in the thermosphere (green is caused by excitation of oxygen). Very cool. Even if it wasn't a great shot (which it is), it would be a keeper for the rarity of the colors.
crf59 wrote:
Very unusual to see a display without green colors. The pink/purple color comes from nitrogen excitation in the thermosphere (green is caused by excitation of oxygen). Very cool. Even if it wasn't a great shot (which it is), it would be a keeper for the rarity of the colors.
Chuck
Not sure about that, as the pinks/purples tend to be fairly common in the mid-latitudes, in comparison. In Iceland or similar, yes, they typically get green, as the aurora is generally occurring overhead, and pink would be relatively uncommon. Here in CO, it is almost always pink, as the green is 'beneath', and occurring too far north (too low in the atmosphere) to be visible. Finally got some green two nights ago, it was fun to see it all occur nearly overhead, with pillars going nearly all the way to zenith.
