This is a 270º panorama of the May 10/11, 2024 great aurora display, when the Kp Index reached 8 this night bringing aurora to as far south as the southern U.S, and even into the tropics.

Here, from my home in rural southern Alberta, Canada (latitude 51° N) we saw curtains strongly colored green and red from oxygen at the peak of the show, but also pink and blue from nitrogen, with the latter colors unusually strong with pinks visible to the naked eye and purples and blues to the camera. This panorama is from later in the show, about 2:15 am (on May 11) when the main curtains (to the west here, at left) had subsided, but the rest of the sky to the north and east were filled with vertical rays that were colourless to the eye, but were blue and purple to the camera, and with white segments. This was a very unusual sight. Some of the blue might be from sunlight illuminating the upper curtains.

The panorama is an equirectangular projection spanning about 270º, and reaching almost to the zenith 90° high at top. But the projecton of the round sky onto a rectangular frame stretches and distorts the sky, including stars and aurora, along the top. Arcturus is at far left in the southwest; Vega and the Summer Triangle stars are at far right in the east. The Big Dipper, somewhat distorted, is left of centre; Polaris and the Little Dipper are at centre; Cassiopeia is below centre.

This a stitch of 11 segments, each 13-second exposures, with the Laowa 15mm lens at f/2 on the Canon Ra camera at ISO 800, and turned to portrait orientation. Processed in Camera Raw and stitched with PTGui.