‘Unbelievable!’ Northern lights dazzled Tri-Citians with rare light show

The northern lights shone along the night skyline of the Tri-Cities Monday night.

To the naked eye, the aurora borealis appeared as a gray to pale green haze or cloudiness along the horizon. But time exposure photographs caught the event in brilliant color with bright greens and even a few streaks of pink and purple.

Shuttha Shutthanandan, by day a materials scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, usually likes to head north to the Connell area of Franklin County when one of the northern lights apps he uses predicts that the night light show might be visible as far south as the Mid-Columbia.

But Monday he didn’t notice an alert until too late to drive north to be clear of the Tri-Cities light pollution. Instead, he tried his luck at the top of hill behind Yoke’s Fresh Market in Richland.

“Unbelievable!” he said about the experience. “I was even able to see the lights with my naked eye.

This was the first time he’s seen them from the Tri-Cities, he said.

“It was a very strong disturbance,” he said. “That’s why I could see it from the Tri-Cities.”

He took photos around 11:30 p.m., with his camera on a tripod and 10-15 second exposures that caught a brilliant green band stretching low in the night sky over the Tri-Cities to the north.

“It’s just fun to go out at night in a beautiful area. Especially if you are in a dark region you will really enjoy it,” he said.

Scott Butner, a professional photographer in Richland and retired PNNL scientist, made the drive out to a favorite location east of Connell where he is out of the Tri-Cities light shadow.

He’s found he has to get about 45 miles away from Tri-Cities to get a really dark sky.

He shot 15 second exposures from about 9 to 11 p.m. and then compressed about 350 frames into a 12 second video of shimmering green and pink lights.

Then he headed to Howard Amon Park in Richland for a shot of the aurora borealis reflected in the Columbia River.

More northern lights forecast?

He only sees an aurora borealis locally that is as bright as the one Monday night every couple of years, he said.

But he said this appears to be the start of a multiyear cycle with more solar flares that release charged particles, leading to sightings of the northern lights on Earth.

When the sun releases a huge bubble of electrified gas in a solar storm, some of the energy and small particles can travel down the magnetic field lines at the north and south poles into the Earth’s atmosphere, according to NASA.

When the particles interact with oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere, the oxygen gives off green and red light. Nitrogen can glow blue and purple.

The aurora borealis seen late Monday night or early Tuesday morning from Washington state to New Hampshire was right on time, Butner said.

He typically sees peak activity at the end of March and the end of September. But spring’s often stormy weather in the Tri-Cities means the northern lights are more often visible in the Mid-Columbia in the fall, he said.

This story was originally published October 12, 2021 at 12:35 PM.