5/8, Wednesday. Late afternoon, headed out to Pitt Lake for an easy walk.
Saw 2 Osprey at their nest. A few red-winged black birds.
This is one of my favorite locations in the Great Vancouver area: scenic, not too much traffic, not too many people, many options with long or short loops.
Very quiet on this Wednesday.
However, seems it has been discovered. The parking lot will be installing a fee collection station starting on May 17th (till Octobor).
This year, the water level is so low, that there's only one short channel that a boat can get out into the lake proper without risk being stuck in the mud.
5/10, Friday. At 9:40pm, we headed out to SFU's Starry Night (every Friday on a clear night). Forgot to bring a flashlight ! Maybe 50 people are roaming around next to Trottier Observatory. A couple of telescopes were set by their proud owners. I got my phone attached to one of them for this beautiful photo of our moon. Then, we queued up to enter the observatory. It was slow going.
While waiting, as the moon set, we started to see faint aurora.
Tonight, an unusually strong solar storm unleashed the color in the sky.
University of Alaska's aurora forecast called for 8/10 solar activity.
For 5/10, I was flying to Alaska (twice) to see the light (both failed).
We could see pink and green, albeit more faint then fancy camera (even newer phone camera) can capture with long exposure.
These photos are from my old phone (2019 model), more realistic, on par with what my eyes saw.
The color light was all over our heads (360°), shifting. Not all the time, but frequent enough.
Red is dominant. Green next.
Inside the observatory, all we were shown was an LCD panel that's connected to the telescope. In fact, the solar storm had made the star image not as clear as usual. Need to peek through the solar system. We were looking at Galaxy M81. The volunteer students went on and on about black hole. Anyway, we were disappointed.
It was past midnight, we drove down the hill (a lot of cars coming up to SFU campus now), and headed to Pitt Meadow area (near where we walked 2 days ago), hoping for darker sky.
But this time, so many cars leaving, shining the road like daylight.
Unfortunately, around this time, the color wasn't as good. Mostly white and green.
I like the framing of water with the night sky.
5/11, Saturday. Back home was almost 2am! I picked up my luggage and drove back to US, hoping to see more northern light on my way. Yes, I did. Mostly white and green. I made two stops, for nap and watching the night sky. Got very sleepy.
5/12, Sunday. The solar storm continued to Sunday evening (wasn't in the forecast on Friday). The strength on Sunday was 7 out of 10. The moon was 21%, much brighter than Friday. After it set at ~1:50am Monday, I went out to the waterfront, slightly less artificial light. Too cloudy. I didn't see anything.
