Aurora Borealis: View from Alaska

Aurora Borealis: View from Alaska

Astrophotographer Todd Salat: "Here’s a few aurora shots I harvested in the bright moonlight just before 1am on September 25, 2026, near Delta Junction, Alaska. These lights were so brilliant and fast-moving that I had to dial down the camera exposure to a fraction of a second to freeze the action. Pareidolia is taking shape here and someone mentioned they see a saguaro cactus in the first image, and I keep seeing a cat then a dog in the next two which were photographed only 12 seconds apart. I was racing to keep up because for 20 solid minutes multidimensional auroras were racing across the whole sky and left me breathless! Thank you solar wind stream."

Pareidolia: Dictionaries describe this term as a human tendency to see recognizable shapes in objects or data that are otherwise not familiar to us.

Known as the northern lights (aurora borealis) or southern lights (aurora australis), auroras are colorful, dynamic, and often visually delicate displays of an intricate dance of particles and magnetism between the Sun and Earth called space weather. When energetic particles from space collide with atoms and molecules in the atmosphere, they can cause the colorful glow that we call auroras.

Learn more about auroras: 
https://science.nasa.gov/sun/auroras/

Alaska is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is considered to be the northernmost, westernmost, and easternmost state in the United States. It borders the Canadian territory of the Yukon and the province of British Columbia to the east. It shares a western maritime border in the Bering Strait with Russia. The Chukchi and Beaufort Seas of the Arctic Ocean lie to the north, and the Pacific Ocean lies to the south.

Image Credit: Todd Salat
Location: Delta Junction, Alaska, United States

Todd's website: https://www.aurorahunter.com
Date: Sept. 25, 2026

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