I heard tonight that the Aurora Borealis was going to be strong, so I went outside onto my balcony which happens to face North and managed to get these. Not bad for the middle of England, I think. Comments invited.
May 10, 2024
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There might be other auroras visible around the world over the next few days due to the geomagnetic storm hitting the earth this weekend.
media.bom.gov.au/releases/1224/the-bureau-issues-a-warning-for-a-g4-geomagnetic-storm/
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Good to see that you do not have to go to the frozen North to see this wonderful sky show.
How does it look to the eye? I have read that photographs exaggerate the effects.
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Strange -- I had a Minolta A1 that started making pictures like that. Sony issued a recall for it and replaced the sensor! 😉
Seriously, will it be even more impressive tonight?David
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My daughter woke me up in the night with a phone call to tell me about this. She could see it from her 4th storey balcony very well. I just about made them out from my house. Amazing to see it from London really.
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Excellent!
From Scotland:
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You hardly see anything with the naked eye. It is very strange. It makes me realise that when I went to Iceland to see the Aurora, it probably was there, I just was expecting it to look like the pictures above, so I didn't try to photograph it.
Alan
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Depends.
The eye isn't good with colour at low levels of light and the aurora is typically not that bright, you won't see it on a full moon. You can definitely see it, and sometimes very pronounced. Also when you are under it is like "many flags in the wind" a ribbon that dances and shimmers. It was right overhead for us, and sometimes a little south. This is a rough approximation of how it appeared to the eye, though I missed it's peak where it was far better defined:
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That sounds like an expensive oversight. I hope you enjoyed something else to make the trip worthwhile.
Perhaps the brain interprets it as a variation in lighting color and mostly cancels it in direct perception. If that is the case, it should still be visible and not cancelled in an EVF or on an LCD, as the brain takes what's on them more literally. Think about how you can have mixed "cool" and "warm" lighting in the same room, and you may barely notice the difference in direct perception, but when you photograph it or look at a live LCD or EVF, the difference is more pronounced.
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Simpler than that, in low light the cones fail to work as well especially at the lower energy end of the spectrum. Like in moonlight (reflected sunlight) where red appears black and the eyes peak sensitivity shifts towards green. On the LCD screen it is brighter and we can see the colours more clearly.
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I've seen aurora australis a couple of times before (it's rare in Australia, as you can imagine, and not every time there's clear sky) and it looked like a faint reddish glow in the south, only visible after a long exposure, 4ex (shot in 2023):
But this time it was very prominent and clearly visible with a naked eye:
I could see all detail and moving spikes - hoping to do a short time-lapse later on.
