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Yep, we are heading out tonight...I think youngest_oab and I will go watch from Glen Lyon...
Never seen the aurora until last night. Looked on lots of occasions over the last few years but previously when there were alerts and even photos and local sightings reported in North Yorkshire, I was firmly under cloud. Frankly I thought it was evens that I would never see it. Last night I could see feint colours and shapes with the naked eye and photos revealed vivid colours all around me. Spectacular, although the spaniel was struggling with why I was in the garden with a camera on a tripod at 1 o'clock in the morning.
^ even my bother in Auckland and friend in India said they could see it.... amazing
Definitely heading out with camera, tripod & Pixel 4a. I wonder what it'll do in astrophotography mode.
Can't believe nobody told me 😭
Erm, get yourself the Aurora watch UK app on you phone? Kicked off with red alerts yesterday afternoon. I can't recall seeing magnetic field numbers anything like this high before.
Looked out about midnight ( Malton, North Yorks) but it seemed to have turned a little misty so went back to bed. Fingers crossed it stays clear tonight.
That's one ticked off bucket list for lots of you!
Are these pics genuine or has the phone done a lot of heavy lifting? The colours are incredible!
Are these pics genuine or has the phone done a lot of heavy lifting? The colours are incredible!
The human eye struggles with colour in low-light situations, I have seen aurora before, in ‘82 I think it was, when there was a particularly cold winter with lots of snow. Driving back from Basingstoke with a mate at stupid o’clock in the morning, near Avebury, I pulled over and turned the car off and got out, my mate asking what’s up, I just said tell me if you can see what I think I’ve just seen. We stood there in complete darkness watching these shimmering curtains of purple and green.
Last night I could see the rays and shafts, but they were more like gauzy curtains, the colours were very subtle and diffused. I had my phone on long exposure night mode, about 30 seconds, some sat down with my phone resting on my knees, others I was actually lying flat on my back, on the grass at the entrance to a field. Some were taken using the roof rails of my car as a rest - the engine was off and no lights on. Modern phone cameras take multiple exposures then do some clever software processing. I can see it getting even better with the fast built in AI that’s being developed.
Just as I’d parked in the entrance to a field, a battered 4x4 pulled up, curious as to what I was doing - one of the blokes was the local gamekeeper, with a nightvision scope - thanks to him, keeping his eye on things, like hare coursers, the local hare population has increased from around 7 or 8 to 135!
Another from last night…
Missed last night, heading out tonight - I can't decide if I can be bothered to get my proper camera out or just go with my phone.
Are these pics genuine or has the phone done a lot of heavy lifting? The colours are incredible!
I was just using my phone, handheld, with a 6 second exposure. At first, I wasn't going to bother because, looking up, there seemed to be a hazy layer of cloud. The more I looked at it, and my eyes adjusted, the more I was able to discern that the "cloud" was actually green, and some of the dark spots beside this cloud were actually purple. I can definitely get more vivid colours using a longer exposure and then there's also the possibility of applying some manual post-processing, but I don't do that as it begins to look a bit false (and there are many examples of this on this thread).
Anyway, it's a good but cloudier tonight so I'm not expecting anything special.
Looking on the AuroraWatch app, which I downloaded earlier due to missing out last night, the chances of seeing anything in the Midlands is slim tonight ☹️
Is there a certain time to see the aurora, if it's visible in my area tonight?
Getting pretty dark outside but wondering if it's just a case of waiting until it's properly dark or for a particular time.
Aurora watch app showing amber at the moment and the bars on the graph are pretty low.
NOAA forecast map has gone quiet too
Back to red alert now but levels less than half of last night at moment.
Just got a red alert ping up here on Mull but it’s still not dark enough to see anything
Any ideas if it will be showing in Southampton and if so, when?
I have seen the photos from last night from people in the area so I thought I might go outside and look but don't want to be stood outside for hours.
North of Inverness, still not dark enough but I can see the moon so promising
Any ideas if it will be showing in Southampton and if so, when?
no, there’s no real forecasting of this as far as I’m aware. The AuroraWatch app shows things have picked up again, albeit less than half of last nights activity. But it’s not a forecast, only a look at what’s happened in the last hour. We are though in the midst of a nice big solar storm and we have clear skies. If you’re ever gonna see it in Southampton you’re gonna have to take opportunities like this and don’t hold your breath.
If you follow Cumbria Northern Lights on Facebook they’ve been showing forecasts from a place in the USA, which might help, but I’ve no more info than that
Nothing in South Wales, too hazy.
From the lack of photos on my social media feed this morning, I’d say nothing much happened last night. Which was good as I really needed some sleep.
Cloudy in Highlands. Checked 130 til 2, no show
Nice red glow to the sky last night.....oh wait it's the local nature reserve hill on fire.
Finland here, had some great ones on the south coast the night before last. My spouse saw em for the first time ever - best auroras in about 20 years. They are usually much farther north, and the ones south are often just greens - now there were vivid purples and pinks, at times half the sky was full of colour blooms.
Were lying on our backs on a nearby cliff in the woods, for close to an hour.
Last night went again, but no luck.
Some pics from a local paper - https://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/art-2000010419087.html
Pretty special in Warwickshire
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The finest of light shows in West Yorkshire
Are these pics genuine or has the phone done a lot of heavy lifting? The colours are incredible!
A philosophical question - we've all seen pictures of the aurora just now, on social media, on TV news, and in newspapers - heck, I've posted them myself. But NOBODY has seen anything like what is shared with their naked eye. And yet there seems to be a tacit agreement that this phenomenon happened when in fact it did not. Would we accept this in any other context - news stories about something that didn't happen, photos that are completely unrepresentative of reality? Your thoughts?
I asked this on p2
I was looking for quite a while and wondering if it was – I could see what looked like pale ‘sunbeam in a dusty room’ effects but no colours and then as my eyes adjusted I started to pick up a faint reddish purple. So I went and woke my wife up* and also got my son out of his room and gave them a ‘give time for your eyes to adjust’ to manage expectations. And as my son walked out the door he was immediately ‘Wow!!’ I feel very very slightly cheated by having to use a phone screen to really see it, but that’s the rub of being old i guess.
[edit – just thinking that through, why’s that weird? Do people with hearing aids feel cheated because they need them to hear a concert or play? It would only be authentic if they didn’t use them?]
Why they do not look so good by naked eye is mostly due to light pollution. Any city lights nearby wash out the colours. When viewed in more remote locations - away from city lights - they are much brighter and saturated. Say go to Finnish Lapland in the winter - sky is totally dark and no lights nearby, and then they will look just like in the best pictures.
I live in a city, and we went to a small wooded area, to lay down on our backs and it took a while for eyes to adjust. Still washed out, as there are plenty of light sources nearby. But close to what the pics look like with longer exposures.
Same thing with stargazing - if you have never been looking at stars 100 km away from the nearest city, you probably have no idea what the sky looks like really.
Friends have a caravan in a light-pollution free area near Welshpool. They got the God Beam, lucky sods 👍
I've seen some pretty impressive lights in the Highlands, really amazing green red and purple, the beams and waves, plus I was lucky to see them in the Arctic years ago. No light pollution. But I've never seen the intense colours present in any of the images I've seen in recent times on social media. It sort of devalues it for me, I'm not bothered about getting an Instagram photo, I just enjoy the experience of it happening overhead, so they're pictures of something I'll never see
55 years I've waited to see them, and from a scientist's viewpoint being able to 'see' a scientific phenomenon usually requires instruments, particularly fields like magnetism and particle physics. In this case you could see them but whether because my eyes are old and ****ed, or light pollution, or whatever only faintly. My son's eyes saw them better, at least from what he described. Whether with the naked eye or not it was happening in my back garden and I'm kind of sorry you feel it's devalued because you need instruments. Reset expectations, the colours are astonishing if you look properly. A phone camera isn't inventing the colours, just revealing them.
Notwithstanding my post above, it was a great experience - I was sitting on a rock by the coast with strangers I couldn't see but we were sharing a connection and enjoying the awesome (sorry) spectacle together. My question was somewhat around whether this was a bit on the line between photos we accept as enhanced (astro for example) and photos we expect to be somewhat accurate. Or perhaps it is about photos that express what it was LIKE to be there. I certainly felt like the sky was full of bright colours, even though I know objectively that it wasn't.
I went out to look for it at around midnight last night (Saturday night) but didn't see anything. Gutted to have not heard about it in time to see it on Friday.
Yeah I didn’t take any pics, just gawped. Not a fan of the ‘no filter’ instabangers that didn’t use a filter but did benefit from 19 layers of AI-powered enhancements
I hope your hearing never fails you and you need a bit of augmentation to be able to hear music or birdsong properly. Has to be authentic 😉
@scuttler I think the second pic is a Global Hypercolor T shirt stretched over a beer gut.
But NOBODY has seen anything like what is shared with their naked eye. And yet there seems to be a tacit agreement that this phenomenon happened when in fact it did not. Would we accept this in any other context – news stories about something that didn’t happen, photos that are completely unrepresentative of reality? Your thoughts?
Of course it happened, I could see it happening, I could see faint shades of colour, and as I said, I have seen the colours with my naked eyes, and I had someone with me and we both saw the same thing. But at a time when it was early in the morning in mid-winter with no light pollution. Taking a colour photograph then would have involved having a film camera on a tripod, trying to estimate exposure times and apertures, then waiting to have the film developed, hoping something might be on the film. As pointed out, cameras and eyes are reacting to photons produced by electromagnetic radiation stimulating gas atoms in the atmosphere, just to different degrees, and in different ways.
^ so true!
Classic
Of course it happened, I could see it happening,
But
I could see faint shades of colour,
So in fact it (the lurid colours depicted in these images) didn't.
I hope your hearing never fails you and you need a bit of augmentation to be able to hear music or birdsong properly. Has to be authentic 😉
If silly analogies about sound are your thing, a more accurate one would be to say that you claimed Ted Nugent was playing next door, whereas in fact it was a sparrow tweeting in the next county.
What about of Joe Cocker was playing two doors along?
So in fact it (the lurid colours depicted in these images) didn’t.
Yes, they did, my eyes weren’t sensitive enough to see them. Other people in different places, did.
But honestly, this discussion is taking on aspects of philosophy; tell me DrJ, if a tree falls in a forest, and there’s nobody there to hear it, did it make a noise?
Did it?
You’re so smart, you tell me.
Oh, and which lurid colours? Mine aren’t, they’re an accurate representation of how auroras look, as can be seen in photos from literally all over the world. Some, very clearly, have had a lot of buggering about done to them. I never, apart from occasional cropping, futz around with my photos - I’m too sodding lazy!
Dunno if it’ll work, but here’s a link from someone in the States showing a photo of how aurora usually look to the human eye.
https://twitter.com/thegaryarandall/status/1789889902454161581?s=61
As I said before, in 1982, I saw an aurora with colours, reds and greens, with some purple, quite clearly, with no enhancement or artificial aids. That, though, was a pitch-black sky at somewhere past 1.30am, not just before 11pm, with some sky glow from the lights of Bristol twenty or so miles away.
#aurora
Talking about it to people at work, who understand the physics and the 'philosophy' about whether using an instrument to measure something is valid. One comment made that I want to pass on to correct a misconception, me included. It's not the sensitivity of the sensors to light and colours that makes the difference, in fact our eyes (even shagged ones) are generally better than cameras. It's just our eyes are permanently on video mode, with a very high refresh rate whereas the cameras can gather longer exposures.
One could argue that since a camera sensor is arguably the more accurate representation of what's actually happening, using a phone on long-exposure mode is the best way to view it.
The philosophical attitude doesn't bother me. I can't see microscopic items, or wavelengths outside of a tiny range, or things a long way away, but with the right instruments I can and it doesn't stop me thinking they're incredible.
The simple fact is that the bits of your eye that see colour aren't good at night. It took me 30 minutes of night adaptation before I could see the red and purple shades on Friday night.
Yes, they did, my eyes weren’t sensitive enough to see them
That's kind of the point. Your eyes (our human eyes) don't see everything, and usually it's clear that what we are being shown is not what we'd expect to see - for example video of war zones taken using night vision equipment.
it doesn’t stop me thinking they’re incredible.
Nor me (as I said above). The difficulty (if that's the right word) is that people are led to believe that something (sky filled with bright coloured visible light) happened when it did not (as shown in CountZero's link).
The simple fact is that the bits of your eye that see colour aren’t good at night.
Well, indeed. It's a design issue with our eyes, not that some eyes are defective.
Go to an area with proper dark skies, on a clear night… look up at the stars. Now, to capture what your eyes will take in will require a long exposure on a camera. It still won’t match. Same with this.
Trying to match human experience with a photo, at night, especially of the sky, is not a simple task.
The camera may not lie, but it is not the human eye.
Here’s a piece by an astrophotographer on why Aurora don’t look very good to the naked eye. Pretty much all ready covered, but useful knowledge from someone who has a clue.
In hindsight, our household should have made more effect to spot it on the intense night (Fri night?), given seeing it in Hampshire shouldn't be a frequent thing. Plus there was no sign of it on our Norway/Iceland cruise way back in August '08.
A bit like the cartoon above, I've seen it often enough that I couldn't be arsed heading out. Sort of wish I had though as it was particularly stong and it was a warm evening whereas it's often freezing and you don't want to be standing about for long.
Red alert on the aurorawatch app.
500nT, whatever that means. Don't know how that compares to last week.
Last week hit nearly 1500nT if I remember right!
Yes 1500 on Friday and then 500 on Saturday when nothing was visible down here
I'll still be checking just in case
Yes 1500 on Friday and then 500 on Saturday when nothing was visible down here
Balls. Might open the red wine and stay at home rather than trying to go out somewhere dark then.
Coronal mass ejection inbound!
Expected to arrive tonight according to the Met Office.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/specialist-forecasts/space-weather
No mention on stargazerslounge
The most recent aurora information I’ve seen seems to indicate it’s centred on central North America, so sadly we’re shit out of luck this time.
No chance here, anyway, ‘cos it’s cloudy with rain forecast in the next hour or so. I’m still incredibly excited about the photos I managed to take back in May, my expectations were very low indeed, so to see the results I got once I was able to stick my phone on charge, and have access to wifi, so the photos could upload to my cloud storage and I could see them on my iPad was jaw-dropping; even the first ones I took in the village with a lot of light from the pub, there’s a green/red glow in the sky which I could see with my unassisted eyesight, which encouraged me to drive out away from the light from the houses.
Once there, I could see the shafts of different densities of light, just not the brightness of the colours, because there’s a fair amount of light from North Bristol, around the Bradley Stoke area; sadly I don’t live in a Dark Skies location so I have to rely on the sensitivity of modern technology and it’s ability to allow handheld long exposures. I didn’t think to take my little tripod, I might have been able to take longer exposures and picked up more of the starscape, like the Milky Way. *shrugs* In all the years I’ve been taking photos, I’ve never taken any like these, and unless I’m really, really lucky I don’t think I will again. These two were taken in the village, the first was among the first I took, by the duck pond, the second about a quarter of a mile along the road out of the village, and you can see how much light there was in the sky. They’re not that different to what I could see, just none of the subtle details and richness of colour.
Some red alerts with high numbers kicking off over the last 24 hours, 797nT this afternoon.
Currently on a campsite high in the north Pennines, wide 360 vistas, clear skies, fingers crossed for later.
And there's a good chance of many Perseid meteors tonight, and the next couple of nights, too. Keep an eye out to the northeast after dark
Ballater last night was impressive, just before 12. I did see a few asteroids but got bored and bitten so called it a night. Photo colours were better than naked eye but curtains of light were more visible with naked eye.
CBA to work out how to post pics.
Dang it, alerts faded saying "unlikely" around 8-9pm. Woke up to high chance alerts from 10pm+. One day I'll see it.
CBA to work out how to post pics
See the wee picture icon in the text editor controls...
I was out in East Sussex till around midnight, but was a bit disappointing as far as aurora and Persieds went . No real sign of either, compared to last night when there were loads (but no aurora)
Stars were still amazing though.
I finally saw it last night about 11pm in a campsite at the end of the Llŷn. It looks nothing like the pictures. Enormous pale sheets blocking out stars filling half the sky appearing and moving slowly. The scale of it was the most striking. I'm still buzzing today. I did get pictures but they look like everyone else's pictures and are not representative! I've wanted to see this my whole life.
Yeah the first time you see them it's a very impressive thing. Every time is different, and I reckon once you've seen them once, more come along all the time!
What molgrips said is how I felt when it all went off a couple of months back.
I’ve just landed in trondheim for a few days working. Hope it picks up again…