On the night of May 10th, 2024, something wonderful happened. Something I have been waiting for nearly 30 years. On this night a series of solar storms impacted the Earth causing an aurora display that filled the sky over the South Dakota Black Hills and Wyoming Bear Lodge Mountains. I hoped that someday, this would happen and that the skies would be clear and the moon would not interfere, and this is exactly what occurred on May 10th.
Before sunset I drove up to Devils Tower, Wyoming from Rapid City, South Dakota with five cameras. My plan was to place three timelapse cameras in locations that I had scouted out over the years and then use the remaining two cameras to capture aurora from my favorite locations around Devils Tower. Upon arrival, I stopped on the west side of Devils Tower and hiked up a favorite hill to deploy my first camera. The site looks to the east and many years ago, I captured aurora from this spot which had two dead trees outlining Devils Tower. The trees have since fallen, but the location affords a beautiful isolated and elevated view to the east. I knew there was potential for aurora to fill the sky so I used extremely wide field of view lenses on most of my cameras. I setup the Canon 6D with an 8mm lens that gives a 180º degree field of view for the entire 360º azimuth to capture an all night timelapse using 5 second exposures. Devils Tower would be in the lower third thus allowing the lens to see greater than zenith overhead.
After deploying my first camera and starting its countdown, I parked in the main parking lot and hiked the loop trail to the south side of Devils Tower. Facing north, I setup my second timelapse camera, a Canon 5D Mark IV with a 14 mm lens. I also carried a Sony A7s III with a 10mm lens to shoot timelapses from various locations. By this time the sun was setting, and I sat down in my small folding chair to watch the sky darken next to my second deployed camera. A crystal clear crescent moon brightened to my left (west). I started taking test shots with my Sony and soon magenta began showing behind Devils Tower. I turned around and captured the scene behind me and to my delight saw faint greens and magenta to the south. The aurora oval had expanded southward over Wyoming and South Dakota, and I knew this was going to be a very special night.
Once darkness set in, I hiked back to the parking lot. Along the way, I deployed my third timelapse camera near the base of Devils Tower on the west side. This camera, a Nikon D750 also had a 8 mm allsky lens was nearly pointing straight up to capture Devils Tower and the overhead sky.
Now back in my vehicle, I headed to a popular photographic viewpoint for Devils Tower, Joyner Ridge Trailhead. I dimmed my headlights once turning onto the access road anticipating many photographers filming from this location. Sure enough a number of vehicles were already in the parking area. Since the area by the parking lot had many photographers and their tripods deployed, I hiked the loop trail to the east in hopes of separating myself from the cluster. I was able to get to an isolated location and setup my two Sony A7s III cameras. One had the 10mm lens for timelapse and the other a 20mm for video.
Now completely dark, the sky was a diffuse green hue with little to no visible features. A magenta band stretch across the southern sky marking the lower boundary of the green color. I was excited that nearly the entire sky was filled with aurora, but a bit disappointed that there were no dynamic columns or curtains. Even so, I sat on a nearby bench and took in the surreal scene. The aurora lit up the ground making it possible to see comfortably without any flashlight. Soon the coyotes began howling in the distance adding to the majestic play unfolding before me.
I began noticing columns and curtains to my east, so I headed toward my west camera as that view would likely line up Devils Tower in front of the distinct features. Once I hiked up to my west camera location, I was treated to a beautiful silhouette of Devils Tower backlit with green rays and curtains. I once again setup my two Sony cameras and sat in my hiking chair to take everything in. After awhile, I checked Twitter to see what others were reporting. Suddenly, as I looked at my phone, the ground began to light up. I looked up to see a substorm exploding overhead and all around. I was shocked with how quickly the sky brightened, and scrambled to adjust camera settings to avoid oversaturation. I turned my Canon 6D allsky camera vertical as corona aurora was flickering directly overhead. I also captured video looking straight up. The sky pulsed and curtains shimmered. I could not believe what I was witnessing.
After about 10 minutes, the sky began to calm down, so I packed up my chair and reset the Canon 6D back towards Devils Tower and hiked back to my vehicle. I headed outside the the National Monument and for the next hour or so, captured video and stills from my favorite locations. The sky continued to light up with reds, greens, and magenta and what seemed like every possible combination of those colors.
By 2 am I had captured aurora from all my favorite spots so I headed to the Devils Tower campground to setup a final timelapse and get an hour or two of sleep. I had no idea what the aurora would do in those remaining hours, but I was confident the timelapse cameras would capture it.
At sunrise, I gathered my things and set out to retrieve my cameras. Leaving cameras out all night clearly comes with some risk, but the potential reward far outweighed the risk in my view. All three cameras were exactly where I had left them and the west camera was even still clicking away when I picked it up. I treated myself to a view from a few of the camera captures before heading back to Rapid City and was grateful that they all seemed to have recorded amazing scenes that filled the sky.
What showed up on my computer screen after the long camera downloads floored me. The aurora was beyond what I could have imagined this far south, and it danced all night long ending in a beautiful ballet of blues and violet as the sun approached the horizon to the east. Putting all the timelapses together show that it was truly a night like no other. I cannot begin to state how grateful I am to have witnessed such a beautiful display of Earth’s physical processes in action. It was humbling and gave me some peaceful perspective from the chaos and uncertainty that has seemed to overtaken our lives. This amazing event also seemed to bring together, in common awe and appreciation, a large portion of humanity since it was literally seen around the world and from both hemispheres. People have been sharing their experiences, and it has been wonderful to see what others witnessed.
Below is a video with accompanying music that provides a sense of what I experienced and how I felt that night.
On a final note, I intend to make my camera captures available to the scientific community as the time accurate image and video observations may be useful to better understand aurora and its behavior and the solar storms that cause it to color the night sky. Before I left for Devils Tower, I setup another upward looking allsky timelapse from my observatory terrace that started during twilight and ran until dawn using 5 second exposures. A total of 4080 images were captured of the entire night’s activity. If you are a scientist and interested in the image data, please feel free to reach out to me at tom.alan.warner@gmail.com.