Northern lights captured -- at last

And now, at long last, I have captured the aurora borealis.

The night of October 10 and the early morning of October 11 it was, well, heavenly. Blue-green to the north and red to the southwest -- it was all around us. Looking southwest, it was like staring into a raspberry frappe. The aurora was clearly visible to the naked eye. 

It was cold as heck, with a wicked wind that whipped the branches around. I was bundled up nicely and didn't feel it all that much. At 11:25 or so on Oct. 10, I went out in search of the aurora (my app told me it was particularly intense that night), walking nearly two kilometers total, but unable to find any spots without light pollution. 

Around 1:45, I got out of bed. It was pitch black and creepy -- nearly all the streetlights go off around 1:00 in my area. I stayed within the familiar confines of the garden, propping my phone up on garbage bins and the mailbox to keep it steady, enough to get a 4-second exposure without blurring. My ISO setting was 1600, my white balance 3200K, whatever those mean (I'd found out how to adjust my phone camera settings online). 

The images of the green aurora were taken before midnight, the red at close to 2 a.m.  There were clouds all over my town, and you can see how fast they move in some of the pictures taken from more or less the same spot, the wind pushing them around within a span of a few minutes. The aurora shone bright through the clouds. How I wish I had pointed my camera directly at the sky ... but it was impossible to steady it for even two seconds, with the wind pummeling me and my frame shaking from the cold.

Aurora dancing. Seen in full, they look like unearthly beings, with strange, green nebulous trails. Or tails.