Aurora! And I actually saw them from the Chicago area

Two days ago, there was an alert from Sky and Telescope magazine that indicated likely aurora over the next few days.  I had downloaded the app "Aurora Buddy" to my smartphone, and occasionally had received aurora reminders in the past.  In fact, I remember getting one on a night where lots of people in the Chicago area (who are also amateur astronomers) saw aurora.... and I MISSED it!  So I wasn't going to miss out if they were visible this time.

I looked on Friday night, as my phone "notified" me a couple times, but several treks outside netted me absolutely nothing.  On Saturday, the same happened, though this time the notifications were indicating higher activity.  I was REALLY bummed at this point, because not only had no one else see anything, but much of the higher activity had occurred during the DAY!  Ugh... had I missed the aurora due to... sunlight?

Turns out, I hadn't.

Apparently the best was yet to come, although what I saw for aurora was not what I've seen in video or pictures.  After getting "pinged" several times by my smartphone starting around 4:00pm, but only venturing outside after 9:00pm (it's been HOT here), I made more concerted efforts to find aurora, if, in fact, any were present.  Now I have quite a few streetlights and post lamps that are outside my house, plus to see aurora, one typically looks north from where I am.  And what is north of me?  Only the poster child for the worst light pollution in the U.S.: The city of Chicago!

But I persisted.  After a couple ventures outside, my phone pinged me around 11:00pm.  The activity was at it's strongest ,and showing possible aurora over/south of where I live.  I ran outside and looked.  And looked.  And looked.  Finally, I thought, "Are those high clouds?  Or aurora?"  Only one way to find out: Head to a bit darker location.

My older daughter ventured with me over to our high school, which fortunately has not only decent lighting fixtures, but no trees to block the view.  I set up my camcorder on the lowest light setting, and let it run while we talked about what we could see, where, and how it was changing.  Here is what I wrote about the experience at Cloudnights.com:

There did not appear to be any clouds in my area, based on the satellite data. My daughter and I went over to our high school parking lot and looked north (straight towards the light pollution of Chicago/south suburbs - ugh). From about NNE over to the W there was a patch of what appeared to either be clouds lit up by light pollution or aurora. 

For a while they appeared to be pink - this would be consistent with the light pollution, so we were not convinced it was aurora. But to the west - where this is not another city with any lights for 20 to 30 miles - there was a soft bluish/greenish cast to the grey. Was it our eyes? If there was any movement to them, it was VERY slow - akin to that of slow moving clouds.

But then the area towards Ursa Major in the NW changed over 5-10 minutes time. Instead of appearing pink (possible light pollution), it looked like the bluish-greenish-greyish that we were seeing to the west. This was unexpected, and whereas it could easily have been clouds lit up by light pollution before, now it was a different color. It may have been grey and us wanting to look too hard, but this area was definitely not pinkish anymore. 

That is the best I can describe it.  There was one section between Cygnus and Cassiopeia that I was convinced MAY have been an aurora, as it was a significant brightening of sky.  However, I was only 60% convinced I had seen an actual aurora, though my daughter, ever optimist, was 75% convinced (despite not having much of a passion for astronomy - okay, she doesn't have any at all, but she was excited about last night for some reason).  When I got home, my conviction percentage dropped a bit as the area of brightening I saw was actually a brighter section of the Milky Way according to Stellarium.

Fortunately, I got a couple responses to my post on CloudyNights.  Here's what they said:

From CloudyNights forum member Sorny

Yes, you saw the aurora. It had very little apparent motion, and very little color; your description matches what I saw the night before almost to perfection. Just a hint of greenish color, looked like a lit up very slow moving cloud.

I've seen some spectacular aurora, and now I've seen BORING aurora. I much prefer the spectacular variety; where it is bright, fast moving, and multi-colored.  

And from Sky and Telescope, and CloudyNights forum member Tony Flanders:

Yes, that sounds just right. I fairly often see a distant aurora as a featureless green glow along the northern horizon. When it's that far away, you can rarely see motion.

Anyway, in my experience motion in auroras tends to be rather slow -- things change on a scale of minutes rather than seconds. But the beauty of auroras is that no two are alike.  

So... I saw aurora!  First time ever!  I'm rather excited about it, even if they were not terribly impressive.  I guess I'll have to venture much further north some time and get a lot better view of them, if possible.  But "firsts" like this don't happen all that often, so this one was special, and I got to share it with my daughter.  Couldn't ask for a better night!