Last night around 9:00 p.m. I realized that the sky was clear, and the temps were mild, so I decided to take the camera and tracker out to try to get some general shots of the winter night sky and constellations for my little astronomy project. I had checked SpaceWeather for auroras, but there were no predictions of a storm this far south. However, when I got out in the field out back of the cemetary, lo and behold there was a lovely green glow to the north! We were having an unexpected outburst of northern lights, and much to my delight I was able to take many shots. While I was setting up a coyote started yipping in the field just the west of me, and a group of coyotes just down to the south of the big field joined in the chorus. Sounded like about 5 of them, hard to tell exactly how many when they're all yipping and yowling. When their song ended I could hear one of them prowling along the fencerow about 100 feet away, it found something of interest and was scratching and digging in the snow and ice. As I was taking long exposures of the auroras it must have heard me cursing (ballhead doesn't hold tight, keeps slipping, too many lights on buildings nearby) and came closer to investigate. The field next to me has been unmowed and is covered in tall dead weeds, I could the rustling as it prowled back and forth. I wanted to shine a light on it but the stupid batteries in the flashlight were failing. Note to self: carry some backup lights!
