Photos from the airglow outbreak on the night of Feb. 25 - Feb. 26, 2025. - West Elk Mountains, Colorado, USA

Summary

I was out stargazing and noticed what appeared to be dark streaks across the sky. The sky looked bright like there were high altitude clouds, and the dark streaks looked like clear patches. A 20 second exposure with the Nikon D750 revealed the green glow. The ripples passed overhead then accumulated in a green band towards the southern horizon. Interestingly, KP index raised to near kp4 around the time this was happening.

Detail

The photo at the top of the page and the gif at the bottom were taken first and are looking north at 11:25 pm MT on Feb 25, 2025 (6:25 UTC Feb 26). The ripples were prominent in brightness and visible to the unaided eye as alternating strips of bright and dark. A 20s exposure at iso3200, f2.8 revealed the green glow. The ripple wave fronts were moving from north to south (as seen in the GIF). It appears very faintly that there is a secondary set of wave fronts perpendicular to the dark bands. This perpendicular cross-hatch pattern is apparent especially on the right (east) side of the photo.

The photo at the bottom of the page was taken later and is a panorama looking south at 1:00 am MT (8:00 UTC) on Feb 26, 2025. The ripples had finished propagating from north to south and appeared to accumulate or pile up in the south as seen by a brighter visual appearance to the unaided eye and deeper green color in the photo.

To the unaided eye, the airglow resembled high clouds and had a whitish appearance that looked kind of bright. I may not have even noticed if not for the strong dark bands. At first I thought the dark bands were clouds, but after looking closely, I could tell that the background stars showed up most clearly in the dark patches, so they were actually clear patches of sky rather than clouds.

It was very interesting and exciting to behold the waves passing by overhead. It was a noticeable pulse of energy.

See the story on SpaceWeather.com