Cause and Effect

Please see explanation below.

People frequently ask… "What causes auroras?" So I had the idea of trying to create an image that would depict both an aurora and its "source" in the same photograph.

The primary catalyst for auroral activity is the sun…charged particles are thrown off into space and make up an energy stream called the "solar wind". Some of this wind intercepts Earth, and although our planet's magnetic field deflects most of this energy, some gets funneled into the atmosphere near the north and south poles. The charged particles interact with atmospheric gases and create the glow of an aurora.

Much of the solar energy, released in the form of flares and coronal mass ejections (CME), emanates from regions called "sunspots"… relatively cool dark areas on the solar surface (the average "spot" is about twice the diameter of the Earth). It takes approximately two days for the solar particles to reach the earth.

The large red object in the upper right of this image is the sun, and you will notice a few sunspot groups (especially the large group on the left). I photographed the sun through a telescope with a special solar filter (NEVER look directly at the sun without a special solar filter!). As it happened, there was a CME the day I shot the sun. Then two nights later, when the energy from the CME reached Earth, I exposed the same frame of film, capturing the resulting aurora.