Photographer: Scott McClurg

Camera: Nikon D1X

Aurora borealis -- or northern lights -- light up the sky northwest of Lawrence early Nov. 8. The lights were easily seen with clear skies and a late rising crescent moon.

Lens: 17-35mm (at 17mm)

Aperture: 2.8

Shutter speed: 20 second exposure

ISO: 400

Just after getting home from covering the Kansas University men’s basketball game against Emporia State, my work phone rang at about midnight. It was Susan Roberts, a Journal-World copy editor, and she said people were calling the newspaper with reports of seeing aurora borealis, or northern lights, from Free State High School and near Kasold Drive and Peterson Road.

So I loaded all my gear back into my car and went out to see what I could find. As I was driving, I remembered what a wild goose chase these things were last year when I couldn’t find anything after hours of driving around in the dark.

Once I was far enough from Lawrence’s lights northwest of town, I could see an eerie green glow on the northern horizon. I clamped my camera to a gate on the road and took some test shots to see what a time exposure would look like. The result was an intensifying green and red glow getting bigger by the minute.

After what seemed like half an hour (but after looking at the times recorded on my pictures was actually a little more than five minutes), the red was gone and wouldn’t return.

It was a very long, exciting night chasing the lights. I traveled from Perry to downtown Lawrence to Clinton Lake and back to Perry trying to make more pictures, but the rising moon and my exhaustion prevailed.

I learned a lot about auroras in the past week and have put together some tips:

• The lights are pretty faint and can be hard to photograph, but time exposures capture a lot of things that your eye cannot see. Higher film speeds like 400 or more work best, and setting your aperture to let in as much light as possible works best (for example, f2.8 or f4).
• Shooting long exposures requires a tripod or other camera support. You won’t be able to hold your camera still for upwards of 30 seconds.
• Try to find the darkest sky you can to view the auroras on a clear night. This means getting away from town, maybe a country road or state park. Also be aware of the moon; once it rises you are pretty much out of luck.
• I won’t get into what causes the aurora borealis, but I will tell you some Web sites that help predict when we may be able to see them again: www.spaceweather.com and www.sec.noaa.gov.
• There is a chance that the lights will return in the next couple of weeks, so hopefully we will get another view of the northern lights.