Aurora Chasing in Virginia, Sky Meadow State Park

I’m not a jealous person. I love when other people are beautiful and adventurous and well-adjusted and successful, contrary to petty haters whose lack of confidence pervades all their behavior and rottens their head and heart, poor things. But I’ll admit… when the Aurora Borealis starting showing up vividly near my home, I felt a pang. Sure, I saw the Northern Lights way up north in Fairbanks, Alaska… and it was amazing. But here in the contiguous states? I finally heeded the Notification Alert from my Aurora app and headed to the closest darkest place I could find, Sky Meadow State Park–a certified dark sky park.

I arrived close enough to dusk to see the lay of the land in the light.

There were some others… there were cows… but there would be A TON more folks by the time I slowly backed out of the parking lot concerned about being blocked in.

Looking around

Soon after dusk but before astronomical twilight, it started happening. Purple in the sky… then more colors. I just kept shooting and shooting knowing the motion of the Aurora in a timelapse was what I wanted to capture.

In Alaska I saw only green… here in Virginia, mostly magenta. But the green played, as did purple and as did portions of blue, the standard night hue.

It was so exciting and glorious.

I was so glad I had made the trip, but I decided to leave when it got too crowded. I had gotten what I wanted and wasn’t going to be greedy. And I wanted to process these pics and create my time lapse, which I tried to load below… but I am at the airport and it is slow-going. I’ll check back on it later, because you do have to see how the sky danced. 💚🩷💜