SK Winnicki, PhD 🏳️‍⚧️
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skwinnicki.bsky.social
SK Winnicki, PhD 🏳️‍⚧️
@skwinnicki.bsky.social
29K followers 7.9K following 20K posts
Evolutionary ecologist & ornithologist, postdoc Ohio State | PhD UIUC, MSc Kansas State | SciComm, birding, and nature photography | certified Lawn Hater, Cowbird Apologist, Stress Physiology Enthusiast, Typo Lover | they/them 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 | skwinnicki.com
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skwinnicki.bsky.social
...just a little bit more vibrant bsky.app/profile/skwi...
skwinnicki.bsky.social SK Winnicki, PhD 🏳️‍⚧️ @skwinnicki.bsky.social · 6h
Just unreal, it will never get old. I feel like I just feel more awe every time.

#aurora
Cell phone camera roll, to which I’ve sent photos from my mirrorless camera. The dozens of photos show mostly red aurora, peeking through clouds at first but then just in the open. Second camera roll screenshot showing more aurora photos, including lots of green in the red.
November 12, 2025 at 9:04 AM
skwinnicki.bsky.social
Sorry for all the typos, I'm simultaneously unthawing plus over the moon with adrenaline plus exhausted (it's now 4AM local time)
November 12, 2025 at 9:01 AM
skwinnicki.bsky.social
There were still vivid lights in the sky when we had to call it a night because it was now past midnight and our hands were so numb we could no longer use our cameras. But, what a night! My heart is so full <3

10/10
One last shot of a brilliant red aurora filling the sky over a dark lake.
November 12, 2025 at 8:35 AM
skwinnicki.bsky.social
At one point a cry went up—what was that weird light on the horizon? Some sort of aurora or a fire on the planet’s surface? But nope it was just the moon rising haha. So much more for worrying about the moon blocking the aurora!

9/10
A brilliant red aurora hangs in the sky above an earthen dam covered with elated people. It is not really blocked at all by the vivid moon rising up over the horizon.
November 12, 2025 at 8:34 AM
skwinnicki.bsky.social
I turned to the south, over the Columbus city lights. You could catch the edge of the aurora lights with the camera only looking in this direction, but I thought it was very cool that I could see the constellation Orion, in the southern sky here, with the northern lights!

8/10
Two photos of a similar scene. Toward the center are the stars that make up the constellation orion, a polygon with a belt of three stars. In this photo, a wave of scarlet aurora sky seems to stretch to orion from the top left. This photo is very similar, but there’s also a wispy green aurora band overtop Orion.
November 12, 2025 at 8:34 AM
skwinnicki.bsky.social
At some point someone yelled “look up, it’s right above us!” These colors weren’t as visible to the naked eye, but there were absolutely aurora colors directly overhead. I laid on the snowy ground to photograph them.

7/10
Wispy tendrils of color directly above me, in an otherwise purplish night sky filled with stars. In this photo, there is green color to the left and red to the right. In this photo, a band of red is above a band of green, both above me. In this photo, two green bands seem to dance around a red band. This photo is more similar to the first, taken seconds apart, but you can see that the green was clearly moving, as it now fills more of the frame.
November 12, 2025 at 8:32 AM
skwinnicki.bsky.social
Then the neat red and green bands seemed to mix, forming a brilliant and chaotic burst of color. Constantly moving shapes and patterns swirling around. The lowest green bands right above the lake danced. All visible to the naked eye.

6/10
The entire sky is filled with red, green, and orangish yellow combinations of the two, with redder streaks toward the top of the photo and pure yellow-green bands dancing low in the sky, above the lake. At the eastern edge of the arc, the colors mix above an adoring crowd to form a bright yellow-green color, shaped like a comet with a wider tail to the left. Another chaotic mix of vivid red and yellow-green blobs and wisps, filling the entire sky and reflecting in a cold gray lake below. A mostly-red sky reflecting in a lake, except for a blob of bright yellow-green toward the left of the photo.
November 12, 2025 at 8:31 AM
skwinnicki.bsky.social
The red band extended the entire length of the horizon, following the path of the green band, terminating with it on the northwestern end, forming two stunning bands of light in the sky.

5/10
Two bands of aurora light stretched across the sky, looking like they were painted with vertical brush strokes even though they stretch horizontally. The top band is bright red, the bottom band soft green. The two bands connect over the edge of a lake, on the left side of this photo.
November 12, 2025 at 8:28 AM
skwinnicki.bsky.social
Suddenly, vivid red appeared on the eastern edge of the arc. It grew into bright scarlet pillars, which soon swelled, following the patch of the arc into the sky north of us. We could see it with the naked eye—stunning!

4/10
Four photos of the same soft green aurora arc above a lake. It appears to terminate toward the right of the photo. In this photo, there is suddenly streaks of vivid red above the point where it terminated. Now the red has almost doubled in size, turning golden where it intersects with the green arc. Now there’s even more red, with some bright golden yellow pillars within the red band, which is now arcing across the sky with the green band. The edge where the two bands overlap is now bright and yellow-green, filling the sky so there’s no space between the bands.
November 12, 2025 at 8:27 AM
skwinnicki.bsky.social
In the past, I’ve noticed these green aurora arcs preceding big substorms, with the color starting on the edges of the arc. When we started to see red on the edges we hustled up the stairs to the cold above. It was lovely to see the arc over the lake, even if my hands were really shaking!

3/10
A green soft aurora arc shoots across the sky, reflecting in a cold gray lake below. Same aurora arc, but now the lights on the opposite shore have formed weird worms because my hands were shaking so bad in the cold.
November 12, 2025 at 8:25 AM
skwinnicki.bsky.social
Following the last substorm, we were sitting below the local dam, trying to feel our fingers again in the frigid air. My friends were about to head home as it neared 11PM, but I could see the green aurora arc growing on the horizon, with my naked eye even. But I knew what was coming!

2/10
Above a dark earthen dam, two soft green bands of glowing light form an arc shape above the horizon. A large earthen dam, with an electric plant on the left, stairs in the center, and a place to stand on the right. Above the dam are bright aurora lights. Bright green on the right, starting to form an arc, and a pillar of red above the stairs.
November 12, 2025 at 8:24 AM
skwinnicki.bsky.social
Sure, I noticed there’s a typo in the very first post the second I hit “post,” but I’m not about to repost all this to fix it lol
November 12, 2025 at 7:50 AM
skwinnicki.bsky.social
It felt ridiculous to leave the dam when the sky looked like this, but I couldn't feel any of my fingers and was getting worried about frostbite. So we walked back down and sat below the dam, sheltered a bit from the wind, and took photos as the bright colors faded into a soft glow.

8/8
View of a large earthen dam with a power station brightly lit on the left and stairs toward the center. Tiny people are visible up on the right side of the damn. Above the dam is a sky full of aurora lights, a soft yellow-green on the right and a diffuse pink on the left. View of an earthen damn with a brilliant electric green aurora band above it, and soft pink diffuse aurora above that.
November 12, 2025 at 7:49 AM
skwinnicki.bsky.social
Around this time someone pulled into the parking lot of a beach on the other side of the lake and left their headlights on, so they're in a lot of my photos (don't do this, team!).

That got me to look away from the light pillars, though, and realize there was red directly overhead too!

7/8
Same brilliant red aurora from the previous posts, but now with a bright white spotlight-like headlight shining from the opposite shore. Photo directly above my head, of the inky blue-black sky with stars. The bottom half of the frame is north, and it is filled with a diffuse red aurora color.
November 12, 2025 at 7:49 AM
skwinnicki.bsky.social
The brilliant scarlet filled the sky, enough that I couldn't capture all the light and its reflection with my lens. We could see it very clearly with the naked eye and it was wonderful!

6/8
Patch of brilliant red across the night sky, like smudgy vertical brush strokes. Below it there is some yellow-green mostly obscured behind wispy clouds. Vertical photo showing the edge of the dam in front of me, the bright red reflecting in the water, and the red aurora filling the entire frame.
November 12, 2025 at 7:49 AM
skwinnicki.bsky.social
It took a few minutes, but what had been soft red pillars above the green aurora, only visible through the camera, grew into another brilliant scarlet patch in the sky, visible to the naked eye and reflecting in the lake!

5/8
A cold gray lake with aurora in the sky above it. The bottom of the horizon is filled with an electric yellow-green, partially obscured by clouds, and there are some soft reddish pillars forming above it, like vertical brush strokes in a painting. There are still some clouds in front but the sky is getting more clear. Same scene, but now those soft pink pillars are a brilliant patch of bright pink pillars, like a mohawk hair cut in the sky. It is reflecting vivid pink into the cold gray lake below.
November 12, 2025 at 7:49 AM
skwinnicki.bsky.social
As the bright scarlet patch to the northwest of us started to fade back into a soft diffuse aurora (left), the patch of green aurora to the north of us was developing its own diffuse red pillars (right).

4/8
Sky above a dark cold-looking lake and trees. The aurora fills the entire sky behind some wispy clouds, a soft pink-red to the left and a soft yellow-green to the right. Stars shine through. Across a cold gray lake, the sky glows with a yellow-green near the horizon, partially blocked by low clouds. There are some vertical streaks of red forming, peeking up into the sky that is otherwise purplish and full of stars.
November 12, 2025 at 7:49 AM
skwinnicki.bsky.social
The clouds conveniently blew away from the pillar just as it was erupting into a beautiful scarlet patch that reflected over the lake. This was the first time my friends have seen the aurora, and it was a heck of a show! Absolutely visible to the naked eye (although not this bright of course)

3/8
Where the soft diffuse rainbow of red and green had been minutes before, there is now a vivid patch of bright scarlet light, coming down behind the clouds, through the soft yellow-green diffuse aurora. It is reflecting in the gray nighttime lake below. Same scene, with the vivid scarlet aurora reflecting in the lake, but now you see that my very well-bundled friends are in the foreground, sitting on a grassy top of an earthen dam with rocks in front of them, before the water.
November 12, 2025 at 7:49 AM
skwinnicki.bsky.social
After the ~8:15PM substorm (different thread) I left the dam to meet my friends, who I'd pestered with updates all afternoon and thus convinced to join me on the cold dark dam. When they got there the lights were doing this very pleasing soft rainbow thing, before bursting into a brighter red.

2/8
Same soft diffuse aurora behind clouds and over a lake as in the previous post. It looks a bit like a rainbow, if rainbows spanned from red to green. It is lovely. The same sort of diffuse rainbow aurora behind clouds now has a vivid scarlet pillar forming in the center of the orange section, bright and vertical behind the clouds.
November 12, 2025 at 7:49 AM
skwinnicki.bsky.social
Again, this is by far the best I've ever seen the aurora from Columbus, and I would've been over the moon with these looks alone. But the night was just starting and the cloud cover was going to soon disappear! Along with all the warmth in my exposed fingers.

4/4
Two final photos of this substorm. In both photos, the cloud cover is most of the frame, with just hints of color peeking through. Here the hint of color is mostly an electric green, with pink higher up. But mostly green. In this photo the pink is so intense it is almost red, with some electric green below. But again, it's mostly a photo of clouds, with only a hint of the aurora behind.
November 12, 2025 at 7:19 AM
skwinnicki.bsky.social
I literally sprinted up the dam (ill-advised), realizing I'd forgotten my mittens and only had fingerless gloves (ill-advised) as the definitely-below-freezing wind hit me on the top of the dam. But the colors were gorgeous through the clouds! The best I've ever seen from Columbus.

3/4
Four photos of the aurora, the northern lights, peeking through the clouds, which are white and puffy and floating above the lake. In this photo, there's a bright green-yellow patch towards the center of the frame, with diffuse pink around it, mostly obscured by clouds. It is not really reflecting much in the lake because of the cloud cover. Now the clouds are a bit more open, and you can see the pillars of pink aurora in the sky through the clouds, with a hint of green toward the horizon. Still not much reflection in the lake. Close-up of the pink pillars peeking through a hole in the clouds. You can also see the stars, shining through the lights. Now the green-yellow is stronger, filling up about half the frame, with diffuse pink above. But still mostly clouds.
November 12, 2025 at 7:19 AM
skwinnicki.bsky.social
I knew the clouds were supposed to lift around 11PM, so I tried to ignore the data coming in that we had high potential of aurora. Until suddenly the data looked so good I knew I had to drop everything and pray for holes in the clouds. I raced to the local dam (Alum Creek), pink when I arrived

2/4
Blurry photo of a grassy lawn with a big grassy earthen dam in front of it. A large lit electrical station is to the left. Above the dam, in the purplish night sky full of white fluffy clouds, you see some pink aurora.
November 12, 2025 at 7:19 AM