Luck of the Irish?

I don’t know why I titled this post “Luck of the Irish”. These photos were taken in the night of April 4-5, 2025, which was definitely not St. Patrick’s Day. Also, there’s only a sliver of Irish in my genes.

Maybe it’s the green?

Regardless, on April 4 I decided I wanted to do some night photography. I set out to my favourite spot, the CN Rivers subdivision near Diamond, just west of Winnipeg.

The “luck” part of this post was the aurora. It was a complete and pleasant surprise.

I quickly set up my camera and started making pictures.

I’m always fascinated by the Northern Lights. They change so fast! It’s hard to believe that they can just appear from almost nothing, turn into bright ribbons of dancing green, then fade away, all within a few minutes. If you’re lucky, they keep doing that.

CN sent a train through the display, adding their own streaks of light to the aerial show.

The moon was out, and very bright, but fortunately at this time of night it was more to the south and not “in the way”.

Eventually I relocated to another favourite location, Elie.

Elie

The sky was very variable. From my vantage point south of the CN main line, I could see the aurora appear and disappear. For a short time, the sky lit up with ribbons of light, spanning much of the horizon and a lot of the sky. Then… just a faint green glow.

This CN train came through on a “low” point. Note the distortion on the grain elevator; I was using a wide angle lens, which distorts everything near the edge of the frame, and when I straightened the photo, the elevator “stretched” horizontally. We have to make choices when editing photos!