FAIRBANKS, Alaska – An Alaskan man was greeted with a vivid display of the Northern Lights on his doorstep.
Vincent Ledvina, a self-described aurora chaser and time-lapse astro photographer, lives in Fairbanks. He said in a Twitter post that he got out of bed in his pajamas and threw on his boots before recording the wondrous scene on Monday.
STUNNING VIDEO SHOWS DANCE OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS IN REAL TIME
“So I just walked out my front door and saw this! Wow,” he exclaimed.
Ledvina said there were “no signs of stopping” when he tweeted more images early Wednesday morning.
“Fingers almost freezing,” he said. “It’s -20 F where I’m at. Barely got this shot off.”
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Vivid Northern Lights displays usually follow a few days after solar events known as coronal mass ejections or solar flares. The flares bring a barrage of electrons that interact with oxygen and nitrogen in Earth’s magnetic field that surrounds the outside of our planet.
The electrons briefly energize the oxygen and nitrogen molecules, and when the moment passes, the molecules release a bit of light. The color of the light depends on the gas – oxygen is primarily responsible for greens and yellows while nitrogen gives off more of the blue hues.