32 replies
19h59m
Wow! Check out the view from the Jungfraujoch in Switzerland! https://www.jungfrau.ch/en-gb/live/webcams/#webcam-jungfrauj...
26 replies
18h23m
I feel I need to report my experience from Denmark, Jutland.
It started with white broad streaks, which most of all looked like fog, but then perhaps after 10 minutes or so, we saw colors of red, purple and green begin to emerge from the these streaks. Most astoundingly it all seemed to emanate from a fluctuating point in the middle of the sky. If you looked closely at this point you could see it fall into itself, morphing and shifting continuously.
We went around the house and we could purple streaks at the top and orange to red patches at the bottom of the sky.
Colors observed: Whitish blue, Green, Purple, Red, and Orange
An absolutely a beautiful experience.
15 replies
17h45m
Can you share a photo?
7 replies
17h32m
I took one semi successful photo using my crappy beat-down a20e Samsung phone.
It doesn't do what we saw justice at all.
2 replies
14h29m
When I took photos of the northern lights on my Sony RX1 the colours became much stronger. I assumed all digital cameras captured the colours better than our eyes.
1 replies
14h21m
Yes, an electronic sensor is much more sensitive than our eyes. However, even within digital sensors, some are more sensitive than others. Add that sensitivity with the ability to do long exposure, and you can capture things we will never see with our naked eyes. Even with binoculars or telescopes, our eyes will just seem more photons, but pretty much without the color. That's where the digital sensors really "shine"
0 replies
12h25m
Our eyes definitely do not see "pretty much without the color". Born and raised in Norway I've watched more aurora borealis than I care to count. On many occassions you could see all kinds of colors and dancing lights with the naked eye, very strong and vivid, too. Important to be in a dark environment without light pollution. At the arctic circle during polar night you will see northern lights that almost match the most stunning photos you have seen.
1 replies
7h58m
Here are some quality photos from Denmark: https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/vejret/saa-vildt-ser-det-ud-se-nat...
0 replies
4h16m
Incredible!
1 replies
16h39m
grafelic's image looks totally black on my crappy laptop monitor unless I turn brightness up to 100%, even then it's barely noticeable.
Here's a color enhanced version of grafelic's photo that shows the color bands more easily,
https://i.imgur.com/IS8JWD8.jpeg
Added some blur after color adjustments to remove pixelation artifacts.
0 replies
15h0m
I’m b mobile, it’s still black with a lil highlight.
Near, but definitely not retrospective
6 replies
13h36m
Currently pretty good at the South Pole. The pink skies are wild. Green auroras are fairlty common over the winter, but it's unusual for it to be this red.
If you're interested in a real time video, here's one I captured a few weeks ago from our "back yard" (excuse the Instagram link)
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6T27pEO7dQ/?igsh=eXJyOGtuY2l...
4 replies
9h29m
Unrelated but why are you at the South Pole?
1 replies
6h18m
All the cool people are there
0 replies
5h8m
Cool as in cold? :D
0 replies
7h58m
Why aren’t you?! :P
0 replies
1h19m
I'm wintering for the South Pole Telescope.
0 replies
10h35m
Here are some additional photos from the current storm - https://www.instagram.com/p/C60Y-gIu4Ob/?igsh=N3AwaGZzODN3eD...
Sadly we have pretty high winds at the moment and visibility is poor due to all the blowing snow, but if you're high up (eg an observation deck), it's a bit clearer.
4 replies
15h48m
Thank you for sharing that. I wonder at what speed the morphing happen, also a sense of proportion. Very hard to capture that in anything but direct experience.
1 replies
11h0m
Not sure here in proper continental Europe, but the usual sightings in the Arctic Circle are typically very short. Like it shows up for a minute or even not so. Then you wait an hour and another sighting for tens of seconds. Obviously sometimes it lasts for hours, but this is nothing frequent (in given location).
0 replies
4h29m
I am looking at the foto webcam images too and haven't seen the aurora myself, but the photos show a much longer timespan: For Wildhaus the first image with a pink/greenish glow is at 22:22
https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/wildhaus/2024/05/10/2220
and this continues through the entire night https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/wildhaus/2024/05/10/2230
till shortly before sunset, where the exposure time probably shortens too much to capture the color of the the aurora https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/wildhaus/2024/05/11/0420
Other locations:
https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/ewa/2024/05/11/0330
https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/glecksteinhuette/2024/05/1...
https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/hochleckenhaus/2024/05/11/...
0 replies
13h45m
Per Wikipedia, most auroras are 300 to 600 km wide, and occur at 90 to 150 km above surface. It' below LEO (300 km), but it's considered outer space already. You actually see a thing the size of a mountain range shining and morphing above you in space.
0 replies
8h53m
Thee scale is what the pictures don't capture. The color is stronger in the camera but at some point there was a red or pink streak across half the sky. From zenith and down 1/2 way on one side and 2/3 on the other side. As usual, it's hard for a camera to capture the feeling of being there and having it all above you.
The scale of change I saw yesterday is that it fades in or changes over five seconds maybe, it's not changing faster than that. The most intense lights were over some 20 minute period maybe and then slowly it was mostly disappearing again.
1 replies
8h35m
I was out flying a camera drone on the river Dee between Liverpool and North Wales filming the sunset, when I started getting magnetic interference warnings. At the same time, I started to see flashes in the sky. Then my vision was filled with sparkling lights. A few minutes later I got an aurora warning from my brother and the aurora app. KP 8-9
As the sun went down I was waking through a woodland. I thought the dark would help my eyes to see the aurora, and I could point my camera away from the light pollution of Liverpool and maybe catch some colour with a long exposure.
Suddenly, I realised the colour of the aurora was coming through the trees, and getting brighter. I wasn't expecting it to be visible to naked eye like this. In these latitudes the advice is to set your camera to highest iso and slowest shutter speed and hope to catch a little colour. I wasn't expecting this! So I packed up quick and ran through the woods and into open fields. There, directly above me was this intense white light, with white arms forming a sort-of cross. The longest arm formed an arch over the whole sky, and where they reached the earth, on either side they became colourful, like a twinkling rainbow stretching out to space.
I didn't have the equipment or the wits to get a good photo. I just threw myself on the ground and lay on my back watching.
Wildest thing I ever saw. Absolutely awesome.
When I regain my composure, I will upload some photos somewhere (where, though?) and edit this comment.
0 replies
6h50m
and edit this comment.
You have like 30min to edit and there's a timeout for replies too so maybe put the link in your profile if it gets later <3
0 replies
9h39m
I’m a few thousand kilometres south of you in Portugal - here, we got the side view of what was above you, and it was spectacular - pink sky underlit by blue and green filled with vast columns. It really gave me the sense of being a tiny thing on a virtually naked sphere hurtling through the void - seeing such titanic structures really puts things into scale.
0 replies
14h28m
Someone shared something similar on Twitter: https://x.com/packyM/status/1789113052723314918
0 replies
5h0m
Poetry comes to us when we can’t say exactly how it made us feel. As a son of Jurgen, I appreciated your account.
20 replies
17h22m
If you want the best possible view with the naked eye, give them a chance to adapt to the dark properly. The human eye is about 100,000 more sensitive after an hour in total darkness. A smartphone screen or car headlight is enough to undo it.
11 replies
13h2m
Use the old pirate trick and keep an eye patch over one of the eyes, and switch when going outside. They used it to be able to see inside the boat going from bright sunlight.
9 replies
11h36m
Wait no way? That’s where the pirate eye patch trope comes from? There was a practical reason?
5 replies
11h16m
I had assumed it was because, being a pirate, you were more likely to have had one of your eyes poked out during some sort of mêlée.
But that’s much more interesting…
3 replies
10h16m
I've read another theory: It's because of the sun damage to their eye from using a sextant for navigation. Haven't been able to confirm it though.
2 replies
7h47m
Such damage is creeping and the brain can just hallucinate the blank patches in the vision away, until only like 10% of the retina is left and it just doesn't work anymore. These days, dumbass laserheads are the most likely to suffer from that problem.
It's amazing how much of our conscious experience is hallucination, and yet a lot of people are disparaging LLMs for doing just the same...
1 replies
2h42m
probably because when humans pay full attention and think clearly they can not hallucinate for 99% of things they can sense (disregarfing optical illusion), but there is no 'pay attention and dont hallucinate' switch for LLMs.
0 replies
1h47m
People are bullshitting just the same about topics they know nothing about. They often also won't shut about when others tell them and even when they themselves know that they know nothing. To some extent this is necessary for humans to function at all, and the scientific process starts out from uneducated guesses and rigorously refines them and casts away what doesn't hold up to empiric data.
Optical illusions are evidence of the pile of hacks that our senses and our consciousness use to make sense of the world. I think it is really difficult to fully disengage from the biases this induces, and we are sadly best at perceiving such flaws in others. This might be one of the reasons why humans have to socialize with other humans to maintain mental health.
0 replies
4h55m
This would explain why only pirates wear them rather than also ordinary seamen.
2 replies
10h9m
There's no evidence that this use was real. Mythbusters tried it and said the trick itself does work (which any of has may already know), but who knows if it was even practical in a pirate boat, vs the loss of stereo vision etc.
The whole idea of pirates wearing eyepatches seems simply the replication of one particularly colorful pirate archetype over centuries of literature and tales.
1 replies
4h40m
I feel like the advantages of stereo vision may be oversold in this scenario. At the distances that sailing vessels would engage there's limited need for binocular depth cues - they really only start to come into play at the point where you would begin a boarding action
0 replies
4h7m
But the idea of the patches-for-night-vision is precisely to have one eye covered during the boarding, so when you enter the insides of the enemy boat that eye is ready for seeing in the dark.
0 replies
11h53m
This is genius.
3 replies
14h59m
Makes sense.. all the serious astronomy apps are in black and red, and back before we had phones, we used to use red flashlights if we needed to consult our charts.
2 replies
13h56m
just like all of the 80s military action films with red filtered flashlights or CNC rooms on ships. sometimes, meme like content isn't just made up. as an amateur (at best) astro type person, you learn very quickly how true how quickly a brief flash of white light can ruin your night vision. walking around during the day without sun glasses can also extend the amount of time it takes your eyes to acclimate to the dark. however, once you do allow your eyes to acclimate to the dark, it is amazing to me still how much we can actually see.
1 replies
7h27m
Last night in particular, hiking through the forest there was no need for a flashlight at all.
0 replies
4h23m
On full moons, you can read a book and see the shadows cast by the moonlight. It's fun to take someone to see it for the first time who originally do not believe the shadows are possible.
2 replies
16h43m
car headlights are brighter than the sun from a short enough distance; perhaps you think we can guess what distance you're talking about seeing the car headline from, but actually you have to be explicit about it
1 replies
16h25m
In the dark notice how much light comes from a phone and how much that illuminates the person holding the phone.
A car headlight shining your way from hundreds of meters even over 1km will often illuminate that person far more than their phone screen.
So if the phone screen is enough to undo the hour long eyes adjusting to the dark duration, then the car headlights at almost any realistic distance causes an undo.
0 replies
9h26m
a headlight a kilometer away may be spread over 36000 square meters including your face. (more detailed info on headlight antenna gain would be appreciated.) a 1200-lumen high beam over that area is 0.03 lux
a 500 nit phone screen emitting over about a steradian from an 80mm × 160mm area is 6.4 lumens, but at night you usually turn it down to minimum brightness, say 0.6 lumens. (i haven't measured.) at a distance of 300mm that steradian is 0.09m², so it's about 6 lux
so the cellphone is about 200 times brighter than the headlight at that distance, and that's also observable from looking at people using cellphones walking on the highway
but the person i was asking for more detail didn't specify that the headlight is pointed at your face; and in most situations where you can see headlights, they're not pointed at you. that's just a detail you filled in
0 replies
6h45m
Yup. Here in the city of Seattle, I went to a park where there were lots of people and unfortunately, lots of light. I could see some wispy light in the sky, and it was interesting to look at but not very dynamic.
After I got home, I just laid down in the grass in the back yard where it's fairly dark. After about 15 minutes, I had a pretty good view of what looked a bit like streaky clouds throughout the sky. It was still somewhat faint but the movement was fantastic to watch.
15 replies
19h3m
This also appears to be happening in the southern hemisphere as well and growing brighter. My layman understanding is auroras are the result of coronal mass ejections interacting with Earth's atmosphere, but I don't recall these incidents being large enough to be so visible in the northern and southern hemispheres simultaneously.
9 replies
18h43m
Carrington comes to mind…
8 replies
18h38m
That had aurora visible in Florida and Hawaii. It's going to take a little more effort from the Sun to match that.
3 replies
16h8m
Not for long. The earth's magnetic field is decaying at an exponential rate as the poles shift.
I believe we've spent far too much time worrying about CO2 and not nearly enough worrying about the dangers from our sun.
2 replies
10h35m
The earth's magnetic field is decaying at an exponential rate as the poles shift.
Got any scientific sources for that claim?
I believe we've spent far too much time worrying about CO2 and not nearly enough worrying about the dangers from our sun.
Other than hardening our power grid to the effects of solar storms, what exactly could we do WRT the sun and the magnetic field?
Also, given our serious lack of progress on climate change targets and the glacial pace (pun intended) at which it has been accepted as 1) real and 2) anthropogenic, I think saying 'too much time' is inaccurate.
0 replies
4h18m
1) go to perplexity.ai
2) type in "Is the earth's magnetic field weakening?"
3) read the summary and click the sources if you don't believe it.
Read this about your CO2. The CO2 in our atmosphere is already at a concentration where the narrow band of wavelengths CO2 absorbs is fully saturated. This means more CO2 isn't going to cause more warming, because there is no more light in its opaque wavelengths to absorb. Also the pattern of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere vs surface temperature does not indicated that CO2 causes warming, but that CO2 levels rise after warming has already occurred. Policy around CO2 is hindering human progress and has caused massive economic damage. The models were all wrong, and this paper explains the reason.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266649682...
0 replies
4h52m
I wonder what you (or any of us) would like to say to N. J. Ayuk, Executive Chairman at the African Energy Chamber:- (his words, not mine)
“Africans don’t hate Oil and Gas companies. We love Oil and today we love gas even more because we know gas will give us a chance to industrialize. No country has ever been developed by fancy wind and green hydrogen. Africans see Oil and Gas as a path to success and a solution to their problems. The demonization of oil and gas companies will not work.”
and this is very far from an isolated opinion in the developing world. Given the amount of Western human capital applied to reducing dependence on fossil fuel it's a somewhat sobering experience to take a look at the Mauna Loa CO2 rate of increase. Can you see any significant decrease in recent years. I can't.
3 replies
15h22m
Current storm is visible in Florida and Southern Texas, per NOAA.
2 replies
13h56m
Like, visible visible? I’m a lot farther north than that and if I hadn’t known there was something going on, I’d not have noticed it. It kinda shows up on camera, but naked eye viewing is not even worth a walk to the nearest window. Nothing to see, really.
0 replies
3h40m
Having your eyes dark-adapted (even a bit) makes a big difference. Here (Maine) I couldn't see anything out the window, or much of anything stepping outside, but after two minutes could see large-scale aurora across the entire sky, despite being near a bunch of streetlights and passing cars.
0 replies
13h36m
I’m also guessing light pollution was less of a thing in 1859
4 replies
17h10m
This is the biggest storm since 2003! We hit a G5 on the SWPC geomagnetic storm reading, and my team had to power down components on our satellites to keep them safe!
2 replies
15h37m
Now that’s a badass sentence. What is your team working on?
1 replies
13h42m
Based on the about: “Code monkey at the elongated muskrat’s not-earth corporation”
Starlink
0 replies
8h47m
Based on lack of response, starshield or some other defense or spy sats
0 replies
9h29m
While I was happily posting photos of the ionic chaos over your network throughout. Nice one.
11 replies
19h49m
I live in rural very northern England. It’s incredible, clear with the naked eye. iPhone 14 camera with 3s exposure is out of this world (pun intended, but misleading)
3 replies
11h56m
Since we're all scientists here, I'll report a negative from central York. My wife and I stood up in the attic looking out of the Velux for 10 minutes. It was dark, clear and we were could see from NE-ish to SE-ish. We couldn't really call it. A very subtle effect on a 10s smartphone exposure, mayyybe? I will compare with tonight.
We once rented a beautiful, slightly remote house on a beach outside Reykjavik and one night, the sky danced for us. So I don't feel hard done-by.
1 replies
10h29m
Interesting, maybe it depends on when you were looking? Also central York and we popped outside just after half eleven and the aurora was very visible to the naked eye, not in full multicolour but very clearly not a cloud, quite thick and radiating out from a centre in the sky almost all the way down to the horizon. We have a reasonably dark place we can look from near us (and where we got some photos on a smartphone camera that show a sky full of vivid purples and greens) but I could see it clearly enough from right outside our house even with the bright led streetlights all around.
After 20 minutes it faded from view almost entirely and we went inside. I have no idea if it came back or what it was like beforehand, maybe we got very lucky or maybe it came and went through the night?
0 replies
8h13m
I must have caught a calmer moment at midnight then! I'm in Murton so there's not a lot of light looking away from town.
0 replies
5h24m
I’m 5 miles to the east ! (Dunnington) and was gutted to hear this morning that I’d missed an amazing display here last night. Many people in the village saw the aurora in varied colours - greens, purples, pinks. Incredible photos… it sounds like it was just before midnight that it really kicked off.
2 replies
19h27m
Yeah, it's often easy to make it look much better on camera than what it did in real life. Something to keep in mind if one feel one missed out, heh.
Also, timelapses of long exposures can give a wrong impression of how it moves. But has for a long time been the only way to actually see a video of it.
It's often not that slow and wavy in real life. It's more like watching an orchestra play, where suddenly someone plays a flute in the corner, and then a few moments later a trombone sounds from the other side. It's dramatic and beautiful when it's really on.
But modern video cameras are now good enough to capture this in real time, so hopefully we'll see more realistic videoes.
1 replies
19h23m
Agree. Was surprised how well the phone pulled the colour out.
Can’t find my DSLR unfortunately otherwise it’d be on the tripod.
Had to wake the 6 year old for him to see this, once in a life time type of thing
0 replies
7h35m
If I understand correctly, I think there's a decent chance to have something similar at any given solar maximum (about every 11 years)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_maximum
But it's definitely not a sure thing, and this could very well be the biggest one for decades to come.
1 replies
19h32m
I'm near Bristol. It's still absolutely stunning. It's not just to the north, either - it's everywhere.
0 replies
19h26m
Yep I noticed that to, it’s sort of bathing everywhere from zenith
0 replies
18h33m
In less rural northern England, it was faintly visible to me. If I hadn't been looking for the aurora specifically, I would have assumed it was a weird cloud. After walking a bit away from street lights I could make out a south facing arc spanning the sky directly overhead which went away within a few minutes.
0 replies
19h34m
Similar for me down south too (Cambridge). My first sighting and it is superb.
11 replies
19h54m
Most of Europe == Not covered by light polution. (and specific areas)
(it's orange outside and it's sodium vapor related)
edit: kind of whish I was at my parent's place. It's a lot less poluted but no go here; nw europe densly populated, we also have the artificial sunrise here 24/7 by means of greenhouses.
1 replies
10h17m
we also have the artificial sunrise here 24/7 by means of greenhouses.
That's a Dutch thing. You can choose between being a great exporter of unripe, tasteless tomatoes, or seeing Aurora Borealis, but you can't have both..
0 replies
5h57m
This is what I could see with my camera in the east of the Netherlands, and even with the naked eye I could easily see some red at times: https://imgur.com/a/kloWEOl
1 replies
19h36m
It’s just about visible (much more so through an iPhone camera) in central London right now
0 replies
15h24m
That's pretty incredible. Central London is so bright at night that very few stars are even visible usually.
1 replies
19h37m
Even in the light polluted London you can still see it, even if it's faint.
0 replies
19h5m
From the ground I cannot see it (I'm a bit north of london latitude wise so it should be better), and we have nicely combination of areas of greenhouses and petrochemical companies burning off here so it might be far worse than central london unfortunately. I'm not too high up but my view north is quite ok ... and unnatural orangeish and void of any pink.
1 replies
19h50m
Classic aurora move, I can almost hear the charged particles now...
"Und doch habe ich allein, allein auf mich gestellt, ganz Europa erobert!"
Sure you did charged particles, sure you did, but welcome to Europe's secret weapon: Light pollution!
0 replies
19h45m
Sure you did charged particles
Well technically ... sodium vapor lamps are charged particles. But yea you are correct we're screwed.
0 replies
18h49m
I could see faint streaks from central Berlin. No doubt it’d look better from a deep darkness but even in the city it can be seen tonight.
0 replies
2h40m
I was in middle of nowhere Sweden last week but the number of daylight hours are so high that far north that even in the dead middle of the night the sky is still blue
0 replies
5h23m
Well, I was watching it in East London last night
10 replies
11h48m
Here are some phone pics from my home village in Germany: https://www.nowhereinparticular.xyz/polarlichter.html
This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. My brother, who is a hobby astronomer, called me and sent me outside. Initially, I saw only a faint red glow in the northeast of the sky, but after a few minutes, my eyes adapted and I could see how it slowly moved and changed its form over time. I stayed outside for maybe 15 minutes and then went back inside. An hour later, I went outside again and almost the whole sky was shining in all different colors and forms, from patches to clouds to pillars that seemed to support the heavens, ever chaning. Incredible.
4 replies
10h54m
Is your village north, middle or south Germany. Just curious how much I missed:-/
3 replies
10h30m
Mid-west, in an area called Hunsrück.
1 replies
8h6m
Thanks, I'm in Bavaria, so there might have been be a chance and the other comments say there are more solar storms upcoming. Definitely will have my eyes in the sky tonight. The images are amazing, btw.
0 replies
7h54m
It should definitely have been possible to see it from Bavaria. It was definitely visible in northern Italy. Big cities might have to much light pollution though. Let's hope we get lucky tonight.
0 replies
3h46m
OT but I didn't realise until now the Hunsrück was a real place... I always assumed it was invented for Werwölfe von Düsterwald!
3 replies
10h16m
In southern Netherlands at the coast, with a 10 sec exposure, iPhone 12 mini, main cam, I was able to see some pink and green with streaks. To my eyes it was like faint clouds that changed to quickly to be clouds, better visible when I didn’t look straight at them. Your pics are something else, but what was it like to your eyes?
0 replies
10h3m
The colors in my pics are a bit more intense than they were to the eyes, but not by that much. They were all clearly visible, including all the structures, glowing. It is pretty dark where I come from, the next city is dozens of kilometers away.
0 replies
7h18m
From Bournemouth in the UK, I got the same impression as you - looking like cloud sheets, but more straight lines than, say, what windblown contrails look like. No clear color visible to me but the location wasn't anywhere near "dark".
I've seen impressive (and colorful) aurora before, and can well imagine it might've looked splendid in (darker) places. Don't give up ... maybe more on the way.
0 replies
6h2m
In the east of the Netherlands I was seeing something similar to what you describe, but when particularly active I also saw a reddish glow in places. This is a timelapse I made around the same time: https://imgur.com/a/kloWEOl
0 replies
8h38m
Thank you for not linking to Twitter.
9 replies
20h3m
This shows a scientific view of it:
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/space/surface/level/an...
2 replies
19h35m
Does it shift around? It's quite absent in the western US and Canada right now:
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/space/surface/level/an...
Of course, it's still a beautiful sunny warm day too where I am so it'll be 5 hours or so before it's dark enough to see it.
1 replies
18h37m
The auroral oval stays roughly the same but the Earth rotates under it.
0 replies
18h27m
Cool! That means if it stays stable, it's headed our way on a very clear evening here. Fingers crossed...
1 replies
19h50m
That's a really cool website. Very responsive too.
0 replies
16h47m
I live in a northern Atlantic country and use it to learn about upcoming storms during storm season, days in advance of my national weather service.
0 replies
19h49m
Is it visible from Australia as well?
0 replies
19h19m
It was seen in France and Switzerland today, even if they are not colored in on the map, so it could be seen outside the main areas.
Also - there is green over the equator - is that intentional?
0 replies
8h15m
There is a 50% probability of aurora borealis over the equator right now according to that website.
0 replies
19h58m
This is a very cool visulization
9 replies
19h32m
Are we supposed to be able to see anything in North America?
4 replies
19h23m
In some places yes https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/aurora-forecast-northe...
1 replies
16h17m
Italy is not shown in the forecast zone but pics are surfacing from northern parts of it. Does that mean there is hope for southern US?
0 replies
15h51m
I dunno how far south you mean, but we see it in SW Virginia (which is outside the forecast zones that I’ve seen).
0 replies
18h26m
Thanks! I have a small chance of seeing something lol
0 replies
16h35m
Keep in mind, this is only a 30 minute leading forecast. And day-night status has a strong effect on the ionosphere, to the extent that radio stations have different regulated broadcast power day versus night, and amateur radio folks bounce radio off it at night.
1 replies
18h38m
I'd wait until after sunset.
0 replies
18h26m
Indeed :)
0 replies
12h14m
I saw a very faint red and just a tiny bit of green from a Phoenix/LA flight. 34N
0 replies
12h46m
It's even visible in north Mississippi.
7 replies
19h48m
Is there a map of the world showing where it should be visible? I wonder how far I would need to drive.
3 replies
19h5m
Where are you located?
2 replies
19h1m
SW USA
1 replies
18h39m
It really depends how far south you are and how strong the solar storm will get. You should look for some dark place close up. But it might be, that it is only visible on the northern parts of the US. Even seeing it there is quite uncommon.
0 replies
10h20m
This one was visible all the way to at lest San Antonio, Texas and the Florida Keys. I won't be surprised to see photos from Mexico. Nice show.
2 replies
19h44m
1 replies
19h0m
I can’t tell what to make of that. It looks normal northern to me but people are saying it’s going to be visible in Alabama tonight.
0 replies
10h16m
Saw it in N Texas between dark +15minutes and about 2:30 this morning. Really nice. I've waited since 2003 to see another from my front yard. I caught the big ones during that last solar max including the X27 flare auroras. This show came from a merging of several X-class flares in quick succession. There was an X5.7 today that may also give us a show in 2-3 days depending on whether it had an earth-directed component.
spaceweather.com spaceweatherlive.com
other links in related posts also have additional sites to track things like this. Good luck.
6 replies
10h49m
I am sad that I missed it. I there some sort of forecast service that tells when there is a good chance to see an aurora in a particular place?
2 replies
10h47m
I also missed it. Meant to be happening again tonight though.
1 replies
8h7m
Tonight at which location? Europe? I might go for a impromptu camping trip!
0 replies
7h6m
Apparently much of the Northern Hemisphere, going by how many photos I've seen across the world from last night.
Here in the UK the skies should be clear.
1 replies
10h25m
If you go to https://spaceweather.com they have a link for text alerts when these things are about to happen.
That is one way.
I visit that site and a similar site for CME and space weather information: https://www.spaceweatherlive.com
There is a lot to see and to follow. I just came back inside after snapping pics since just after dark here in N Texas. We had a good show that started off behind the clouds but it was bright enough to shine through the clouds. Then a few hours later after the clouds cleared it was great. My camera battery quit on me. I used three cameras tonight and only really got usable photos from my iphone, whose camera I normally hate because it always seems to process images after I take them. Part of it is probably on me since I haven't taken the time to study how to optimize settings.
Anyway. Tomorrow should be another good day for this. Keep your eyes on the sky!
0 replies
8h18m
I'd also recommend checking a website like https://www.lightpollutionmap.info to find an area nearby that has less light pollution.
0 replies
10h22m
Yes, you can use the NOAA forecast site which will show the "oval" and has 24 hour/30min predictions. Or Space Weather Live has some location forecasts. Generally if you don't live at a high latitude you need a very strong display to see anything. There's usually a bit of warning for storms like this, as various solar observation satellites can beam back images of the CME faster than the solar wind takes to get here.
The keywords to use are “space weather forecast <country>”
6 replies
8h55m
How did this compare to the Carrington event?
2 replies
8h34m
You could read a newspaper from the light in the middle of the night during the Carrington event, so not comparable at all.
1 replies
7h50m
Citation needed
0 replies
7h19m
2 replies
8h32m
That’s what I want to know but everybody just talks about how pretty it is. I want to know if it was dangerous to our electronics, and if not then how close it came to being dangerous, you know, small things like that.
1 replies
7h44m
If it was dangerous, we would know by now. As it is, we are still able to use the internet. Major outages would be all over the news.
0 replies
6h36m
The current storm hit G5 (https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/g5-conditions-observed), it’s officially “off the charts” if it gets any stronger.
By the time you cannot use Internet, it’s too late—and it won’t be all over the news because guess how we make/broadcast/receive them. Worst case you won’t even get a radio transmission through.
6 replies
18h6m
Anyone have any DSLR settings recommendations? (newbie here, Canon EOS R5).
Located North Eastern US, just about approaching dusk. Fingers crossed!
1 replies
18h2m
Don't be afraid of Iso, you might want manual focus, mirrorless cameras even as good as the R5 have a hard time focusing on "nothing at infinity". Largest aperture your lens can do (biggest hole, smallest f number) and the recommended shutter speeds.
I had luck with iso 3200, f1.4 and 1/6s shutter handheld on a sony a7iv with a 35mm f1.4 GM.
0 replies
17h48m
Thanks! Now I just need some cosmic rays to light the sky!
1 replies
17h20m
Use a tripod and use a remote or set a 2 second delay on your shutter press if you start using longer exposures at low iso (anything longer than 1/10 of a second IMO)
Settings really depend on the effect you are trying to capture: - if you want to try and capture it like your eye sees it: high iso (as high as you can stand) and aim for between 1/500 and 1/30. - if you want to capture a more painterly look with the whole sky colored in: low iso (I’d start at 200) and long exposure >3 seconds. Probably between 3 and 30 seconds depending on the available light.
Those should get you started to experiment and find what you like. Enjoy!
Oh yea. Turn off the focus light, turn off the screen, and turn off the red blinking indicators. Turn all the lights off so you can preserve your night vision.
0 replies
15h44m
Thanks, I got some good pictures! AF is def. a problem ...
0 replies
18h1m
Tripod. Long exposure and keep ISO lowish. You may need to manually focus as there won’t be a clear object to focus on.
Shoot RAW and you can tweak the image better to pull down the brightness of the sky to help the colours stand out.
0 replies
18h2m
Crank your ISO up and play with shutter speed. You need a tripod to capture anything satisfactory.
5 replies
17h35m
I'm in the southern hemisphere (near Antarctica) and the sight is absolutely insane, almost terrifying... its a bright red aurora. Never seen anything like it.
1 replies
17h6m
please post a photo!
0 replies
5h42m
I was out last night, but here you go: https://ibb.co/68hPjRT
1 replies
14h7m
people live near antartica?
0 replies
13h4m
Ushaiha and the Falklands?
0 replies
12h51m
Even in Uruguay it can be seen... Incredible.
5 replies
19h22m
If I am in Texas, should I take care of anything? Like flip breakers or disconnect solar panels?
1 replies
19h17m
All of that. Plus, wrap your head in aluminum foil.
0 replies
18h30m
Oil the guns. Count the ammo.. .
0 replies
17h43m
No only an issue with really long lengths of cables. Electrical companies have to mitigate
0 replies
18h36m
It never hurts to fire wildly into the air, Yosemite Sam style.
0 replies
19h19m
No, this is all quite harmless.
4 replies
19h46m
Wow, I just went outside (South West of France) to plug the car for charging before going to bed.
I noticed unusual, faint light patterns in the night sky, like long spikes coming from the North. It was not the Milky Way, we can see every clear night. Color was mostly gray slightly pink. Wondered what was that ... My first aurora !!!
2 replies
19h7m
It was not the Milky Way, we can see every clear night.
I'm exceedingly jealous. I don't think I've ever lived somewhere that I could see it, no matter how clear the night. Looking at images of "north america at night" vs "europe at night" I can see why.
0 replies
17h30m
In most locations around the world , I think you are a 3 hour drive from a camping trip with milky way nightime exposure.
Try it out! Enlist some of your hiking friends. They'll tell you where to go.
0 replies
2h20m
With the milky way it's the same thing as the auroras. I went camping in the middle of nowhere USA, and on a clear night you can absolutely not see the milkyway the way it's portrayed in photos. It looks waaaaaaaaay less clear. You need a very long exposure camera to see it the same way as on the internet. The only difference with Europe is that I saw more stars, but none of those nebulas.
0 replies
18h59m
Go take some photos with your camera -- it will pick up brilliant colours from what looks like super dim/grey "clouds/glow" to our eyes :)
4 replies
20h2m
Barely visible in Northern Italy—no pink worth calling home about—but the sky is sensibly lighter than it usually is.
2 replies
20h1m
The one pointed 'nordest' from Monte Grappa seems to show some pink:
https://www.meteograppa.it/lewebcam.php
Tried looking for some webcams in the Cortina area but they seem to have a lot of clouds. Some of which appear to have a pink hue.
1 replies
19h48m
Light pollution does not help, probably.
0 replies
19h28m
Found one from the Stelvio pass that shows some colors, but nothing like some of the other links people are posting.
0 replies
15h57m
This is from Trieste: https://twitter.com/_sarusso/status/1789112947165270298. Naked eye was way less bright but still well visible I would say!
3 replies
18h40m
What's the lowest latitude it's being seen from in Europe?
0 replies
18h16m
Seems to be visible in Portugal, sadly where I live the sky is overcast.
0 replies
18h19m
I don’t see it from Grenoble
0 replies
13h44m
These were apparently taken from Calar Alto, Almería (37°13′25″N 2°32′46″W)
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GNQEcVZX0AA13FE?format=jpg&name=...
3 replies
15h57m
Checking in from Detroit here… the aurora is actually super visible on the iPhone camera. Much more than from the naked eye (although they are slightly visible… I have a lot of light pollution around me though.)
I’m curious what causes it to come in better in my iPhones sensors… different wavelengths perhaps?
2 replies
14h43m
longer exposure times.
1 replies
13h57m
The longer exposure doesn’t seem to affect other aspects of the night sky though, I can see stars way better with the naked eye than my phone will show. That’s probably just because of stars being point sources and hard for the camera to focus on in an otherwise black night sky.
0 replies
12h1m
Another factor is color - our eyes don’t notice it well in low light, so the patches don’t stand out. Camera sensor is equally sensitive to colors at all brightness levels.
3 replies
19h14m
I heard the aurora would be visible in Netherland, so living in Amsterdam I just went outside to check. Nothing. Maybe some very vague lighter bands in some places? Cities have too much light for this sort of thing.
1 replies
18h56m
You're in the most light-polluted region of the continent. Unlikely you can see anything I'd wager x)
0 replies
18h26m
I saw visible pink bands from my balcony in Amsterdam, showing bright pink fading to green when looking through my iPhone. And yes, lots of light pollution here. Shows how crazy strong this northern light was.
0 replies
15h55m
You have to drive away from the city lights, turn off screens/lights, and let your eyes adjust. Cities are light polluted.
3 replies
19h6m
Well visible in Belgium starting around 23:30 ! Even with the naked eye ! (From outside the city)
2 replies
17h21m
Still true now? In the netherlands hard to tell anything. Certainly nothing on the level of the Swiss pictures being shared.
0 replies
9h52m
I stayed up until about 1AM only. Views from the mountains are hard to match in any case 8-)
0 replies
5h59m
Around 1 AM at night this was the view in the east of the Netherlands: https://imgur.com/a/kloWEOl
With the naked eye I could see moving bright "clouds", and sometimes see streaks of red inside them. After 1:30 it died out quite rapidly for me.
3 replies
7h51m
Does anyone have a direct link to the time period when the aurora hits?
All I see is a beautiful sunny day.
0 replies
4h6m
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/specialist-forecasts/sp...
shows a video-style timeline of predictions for both Northern and Southern hemisphere.
I'm not sure what "percentage" corresponds to visible aurorae though, anyone know?
0 replies
7h37m
You can find the images here: https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/bestof/
Approx time(as per the snapshots): 10.05.24 22:00-11.05.24 4:20
0 replies
7h40m
I think for most folks in Europe it was between 23:00 and 03:00 CET yesterday.
Not sure what future forecasts are. I guess NOAA will probably have some prediction.
2 replies
18h47m
Any chance it'll be there tomorrow too?
Seems beautiful in the French alps, wonder if it's worth trying to go there tomorrow
https://www.skaping.com/chamrousse/la-croix?archives=MTcxNTM...
1 replies
16h45m
There were some follow on flare events. "Additional activity expected"
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/g5-conditions-observed today
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/homepage in the future
0 replies
15h21m
Yep X5.8 registered about an hour ago.
2 replies
14h18m
It's dawn now, did anyone happen to screenshot that page during the night?
The mosaic of pink/purple skies was rather beautiful, but I'm afraid preserving it slipped my mind.
1 replies
12h51m
I just found out that if you select a webcam you can actually go back in time, or even do a 'backwards timelapse' from the view menu. There's also a 'best of' which seems to have a collection of quite nice shots from all webcams: https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/bestof/
0 replies
12h25m
Awesome, thank you!
2 replies
16h53m
Anyone know of sources/sites that track the magnitude of geomagnetic storms as a time series? (interested to gauge the magnitude of recent ones relative to those of the past, similarly to how we may do so for earthquakes)
0 replies
8h46m
0 replies
16h24m
Perhaps not quite what you're looking for, but this might give you a start:
2 replies
17h44m
This is related to the cycles of Earth’s core
Our planet’s magnetic field is “entangled” with the Sun’s activity
This unusual flare means unusual activity for our magnetic field, hence for the core as well
It would be cool to have some realtime comparison/visualization of Earths magnetic core activity, vs solar flares
1 replies
9h28m
Could you provide sources for this? Sounds plausible, given it is electromagnetic energy.
0 replies
3h39m
Just speculating
It’s known that the magnetic core is generating/sustaining the magnetic field, which means that anything that happens to the field, has some sort of counterpart in the core
So it would be cool to have that data: what happens inside Earth’s core when a big magnetic event is affecting it’s magnetic field
2 replies
7h42m
The sky has been lighting up in North America too. I’ve heard reports of the aurora from New England and, here in the Pacific Northwest, it’s currently visible by naked eye and striking in long exposure shots. I always thought I would have to visit Alaska or Scandinavia to see the northern lights, never thought I could catch a glimpse so close to home.
0 replies
1h2m
It was visible as far south as northern San Antonio last night.
0 replies
7h29m
It was visible to the naked eye in the city lights here around Memphis, TN. I've seen pictures from the gulf coast. That was so crazy!
2 replies
15h39m
Damn, I missed it
0 replies
11h4m
The only day in years that I decide to go to bed earlier than usual, this happens...
0 replies
15h21m
lmao same
2 replies
19h39m
What latitude do we expect to be able to see this in the USA?
0 replies
19h26m
See the Auroral oval map https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en.html
Right now it's appearing over North East US, and should become increasingly visible after sunset.
0 replies
19h32m
Possibly as far south as Alabama. https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/northern-lights-south-alabama-...
2 replies
20h7m
Is this related to the solar storm? Why is it pink?
0 replies
20h4m
Yes, and pink is a typical aurora color.
0 replies
20h3m
https://www.space.com/aurora-colors-explained
Oxygen at higher altitudes has a different emission frequency apparently (I've only ever seen the faintest green pulsing aurora IRL)
It's possible to tell what elements something is made of by determining the spectra coming off of it when it's excited: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_spectroscopy
2 replies
18h39m
Could a G4 to G5 storm disrupt air planes while in flight?
Do they ever cancel air travel for this level of storm?
0 replies
17h45m
No and it is beautiful when you are flying north routes at night.
0 replies
17h45m
Yes, if it's a Boeing plane.
2 replies
19h36m
Well visible in central Switzerland: https://feed.yellow.camera/rigi-scheidegg https://feed.yellow.camera/rigi-rotstock
0 replies
18h44m
Crazy, even Bern is bathed in Northern Lights
0 replies
16h43m
Just amazing... I've only ever seen these kinds of photos at the north pole before.
1 replies
11h14m
I’m in Aberdeen for the weekend. Saw nothing whatsoever.
0 replies
10h19m
Me too, but it’s because I slept through it. Feeling better now.
1 replies
15h36m
I just came home, went up the mountains. Absolutely crazy what I was able to see. I live somewhere mid to north Germany. Super stoked to go further up north based on what I saw in the sky. I have to say the images don't even nearly do justice to what I saw tonight, it was absolutely amazing. I spent some 6 hours up there. Just poor phone images, sorry.
0 replies
14h1m
from sheer curiosity, I had to try to see what was in that image. just a meager push of the exposure revealed some color on top of the horrid compression:
1 replies
11h50m
Any Ham Radio operators here can share their experience if and how much it affected radio communications?
0 replies
11h12m
I heard CW on 144.2MHz with auroral flutter meaning (if I understand correctly) it propagated through or off the aurora.
So that's cool!
1 replies
16h30m
Visible in North Italy as well. Unexpected!
0 replies
16h26m
1 replies
18h56m
Here are some visual tools NASA provides: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
0 replies
18h25m
Typo, that's NOAA, not NASA.
1 replies
17h9m
I missed the news around this. Can someone share why this is happening? I thought this was only visible more north and usually green. Thanks!
0 replies
17h5m
Largest solar storm in 20 years
1 replies
4h13m
why was all the news about eurovision songfestival and nothing about this
0 replies
3h21m
Israel?
1 replies
11h16m
Can't believe I slept through this.
0 replies
9h25m
You may get another chance tonight.
1 replies
19h41m
Where do people get their forecasts? I often use this one, but it's not very usable outside Norway. Great if you click into each forecast (click the image) and get more details. Like how it actually covers the sky in that location. So that I can use that to plan (doesn't matter if it's strong if it's in a direction I can't see it) https://site.uit.no/spaceweather/data-and-products/aurora/os...
Used to use a NOAA page, but they changed it a while ago and don't find it as useful anymore. https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/aurora-dashboard-exper...
Some weather services also have a kp index, but I often feel those can't be trusted, and don't tell the whole story. And aurora is quite hit or miss, so need more updated data.
I have an app on my phone (AuroraNotifier) that chimes when there's hope. And then I use these others to plan a bit better. But some more interactive map akin to the uit.no one but where I can place myself around would be nice.
Edit: someone posted this below, looks nice, have some other kinds of data https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en.html
Edit2: https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/space/surface/level/an...
0 replies
16h22m
Generally I wake up and assess which of my body parts are experiencing issues. Pressure differentials play havoc upon internal pockets. Other than that I go outside and feel the temperature and humidity and witness the general movement (or abcence of movement) of cloud formations. I smell the air. Surprisingly, these sensations are pretty close to accurate when it comes to predicting local weather.
I am not sure how to do that for space weather yet.
1 replies
6h11m
And parts of Melbourne, Australia too! Never in my life have I seen this here. It’s a wonderful thing to see.
0 replies
3h30m
Central Victoria here, absolutely insane view with greens and purples through the sky.
1 replies
19h4m
Is that happening because Earth is loosing its magnetic field and the end is near? ;)
0 replies
19h1m
Pretty sure we get aurorae because we have a strong magnetic field...
1 replies
7h49m
I didn't see anything with the naked eye (UK), probably too much light pollution, but I took a photo of the sky with my phone and you could definitely see it.
0 replies
3h18m
Same. Central London though so pretty hopeless on light pollution anyway
1 replies
15h40m
Just saw it in downtown Chicago (by the lake). Faint, but visible with naked eye. Easier to capture with my pixel 8 than with my (handheld) DSLR, even with a fast lens...kicking myself for not grabbing my tripod
0 replies
14h45m
Fellow Chicagoan here! I went down one of the piers and saw it as well. At first it looked like cirrus clouds but the colors emerged as my eyes acclimated. I thought it was my brain hallucinating the details it expected but my phone validated what I was seeing. Truly stunning even with just a 2sec exposure.
1 replies
8h20m
For those coming here during the day, they have a page with the best images of tonight: https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/bestof/
0 replies
2h13m
Here’s a time archive of all the cams https://www.foto-webcam.eu/2024/05/10/2230
1 replies
17h35m
The earth is the greatest spaceship we’ll ever know. Complete magic is this phenomenon.
Feels like one is engulfed in the Aurora when it’s strong. First time I experienced it the arctic circle actually scared me.
0 replies
6h8m
It's really damn beautiful, but it's scary. Whenever there are events on Earth that aren't typical of nature at regular times for some reason I always think it's not a good sign..
1 replies
19h51m
Saw them in the west of Germany. Phone camera made them more visible. But also clearly visible with the naked eye.
0 replies
18h2m
Looked outside just now around Bad Homburg in Frankfurt area, nothing :( So depressing
0 replies
9h13m
I'm on a trip visiting my friend in Central Finland and yesterday we had a 96% warning for aurora chance. Unfortunately, for us, the sky was quite cloudy and we didn't get a chance to see the lights. When we were heading back home I saw a faint line of blueish-purple in the sky, which seemed unusual, and told my friends "hey what if this is the aurora". I checked the photos from the other people that claimed they saw the lights and it checked out with what I've seen.
0 replies
1h56m
From Ushuaia, Argentina close to Patagonia: https://www.reddit.com/r/argentina/comments/1cp89bf/aurora_a...
0 replies
11h19m
9 hours later and we saw similar sights in the Pacific Northwest in the US! Pretty awesome.
0 replies
1h52m
Why is it pink and not green
0 replies
41m
Is it the Aurora or is it the Eurovision finals? We may never know...
0 replies
18h46m
This is so freaking cool
0 replies
57m
Is anyone else experiencing slow Internet during this? I'm not sure if it's related or confirmation bias, but it's been crawling since the storm hit.
0 replies
14h12m
It's the apocalypse.
0 replies
3h18m
I have no idea what's going on because I have a toddler. Can someone catch me up here?
0 replies
19h12m
Thank you! Just made some (blurry) long exposure photos on an old digital camera. Can't see it with the naked eye here.
0 replies
5h52m
Most of North US and Canada is also glowing pink today. Got many messages from friends in Washington and BC.
What a wonderful sight.
0 replies
20h4m
Oh, boy. So beautiful! It's probably visible where I am as well but there's still some sunlight so gg. Hope it lasts for a while!
0 replies
8h19m
I live in a relatively big city where light pollution is obviously a huge thing. But the aurora was so strong that even we were able to make it out, although not as intensively beautiful as on all those webcam feeds
0 replies
19h48m
The NOAA forecast suggests it'll be nearly as powerful as the March 13th storm in '89 that took out the Quebec grid: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/aurora-dashboard-exper...
0 replies
8h33m
This aurora was really powerful! I could see it with a naked eye from a town in central Poland, despite cloudy weather and light pollution. Feels great to finally see it in person
0 replies
18h47m
First time I've ever seen the aurora from West London - I always assumed the light polution would make it impossible to see, but here's a picture I took of it over the Thames: https://twitter.com/MarkJHandley/status/1789070802459000892
0 replies
8h38m
Super visible with the naked eye an hour and a half east of Denver. At some points the whole sky turned colors from green/pink/blue.
Some photos if anyone is interested
0 replies
11h19m
Stockholm Sweden at ~4am https://x.com/aimkilian/status/1789188389108933097?s=46&t=Md...
0 replies
1h11m
i have the unique experience of being in a plane over the Bering sea a few hours ago. https://twitter.com/JeremyRubin/status/1789273537179426922
i was going nuts in my seat and seemed to be the only one on the plane aware of what was going on.
0 replies
17h24m
I can see brown I can see blue I can see violet sky…
0 replies
19h26m
Aurora aside, that is a very cool website.
0 replies
19h24m
These Barbie promos are getting out of hand
0 replies
19h32m
In Quebec and eagerly waiting for the sunset. Ah a few weeks ago the sun was the old lover and now please go away...
0 replies
18h22m
Those are close to the places in Europe where they are growing triffids?
0 replies
18h16m
iPhone 14 from my back yard in (extremely light polluted) Liverpool, England.
0 replies
4h20m
You can see the effects of the CME on the HF amateur radio bands.
This live map (https://g7vrd.co.uk/wspr/IO81) would usually be full of worldwide contacts being reported by WSPR (Weak Signal Propagation Reporter), but the solar flares have closed down the bands quite considerably.
The map is centred on Maidenhead grid square IO81, but you can change it to wherever you are: https://www.whatsmylocator.co.uk/
This will also cause problems with aircraft, as they use HF when they're out of sight of land.
0 replies
20h1m
Nice way to celebrate the Giro d'Italia!
0 replies
19h54m
Nice livestream from a bloke on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTxvAQYKGPI
0 replies
5h19m
Many of the photos here show it in such vivid colour, but for me the really breathtaking part was the scale and movement of the aurora.
Last night (here in Quebec) the entire sky was filled with colour. It's not as intense in person, but the slow shimmer of it is otherworldly. I was up on my roof for almost an hour, watching the blobs undulate in the sky. I think it made a bigger impression on me than the recent eclipse.
0 replies
1h53m
Now that it's over, the timestamp should be in the link:
https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/lucknerhaus/2024/05/10/224...
0 replies
16h2m
This is so cool. I just made a Timelapse from the images of the linked camera: https://youtu.be/pgexFsYzRYE
0 replies
3h33m
I saw a full aurora in Melbourne, Australia.
Colours, ribbons, arcs and beams all visible to the naked eye and on camera.
Normally with aurouras, you only get to see a faint greyish glow on the horizon and it only looks good on camera. Not this time.
0 replies
2h47m
Off topic maybe but Europe is so beautiful. I wish I get to travel across Europe with leisure.
0 replies
2h28m
Feel free to go outside in headphones and put this[0] on.
0 replies
3h7m
Did anyone screenshot it?
0 replies
14h0m
Can't see it from where I am in North Carolina as it's sadly overcast, but I'm sseeing photos from friends as far south as Georgia and Alabama of vivid pink auroras.
0 replies
19h40m
It’s currently at Kp8. https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en.html
0 replies
16h22m
I'm near paris and don't see anything :(
0 replies
20h9m
Even more live views at the main page: https://www.foto-webcam.eu/
0 replies
18h22m
Scotland, 56 degrees north. I expected to see the aurora near the northern horizon, but it was visible east, west and even south, from 11:00pm (2200hrs UTC) until 12:15am (2315UTC). Easily visible to the naked eye. Took good photos on 1 second exposures, ISO 2500.
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17h6m
How long ahead of time can one forecast these events?
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19h49m
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4h32m
Girlfriend sent me pictures from Aarhus, DK. Was absolutely stunning!
Doesn’t look like that in reality. If I take a photo on my phone here in the UK midlands I get pink and green in all directions with a 3 second exposure.
However with just the naked eye it’s like super high level clouds
Ok why is it that some people say northern lights look EXACTLY like these spectacular photos, and others say in real life they are actually barely visible and you need a camera and very dark skies?
Is there some kind of running joke I’m missing? I saw some northern lights in Iceland but they were very dim and underwhelming, I didn’t even know what I was looking at until I photographed them and saw the vivid green streaks in the photo, which definitely weren’t super visible in real life. The tour guide even said they aren’t actually like the photos at all!
Are northern lights bullshit or what? What is possible to see with just a bare naked eye?
Yeah, typically northern lights look like faint white clouds with a little bit of green tint to naked eye. The photos are like those time-exposure photos of the milky way, which is not what the eye sees.
You should try seeing the milky way from the middle of an ocean sometime - most folks have never been far enough from light pollution to really see it as it used to be.
It really does look like a river of starlight across the sky, once you are a few hundred miles away from shore.
While they "typically" look like that, because most often they're quite weak, I wouldn't compare it to milky way photos. If it's strong, especially if you're up north and somewhere with little light pollution, what you see is comparable to lots of pictures.
In addition to the intensity of the Solar activity, location matters, especially nowadays.
The auroras won't be super vivid near larger cities in Central Europe, with a lot of light around you. It's just not north enough and not dark enough. Up north, rural Lapland or so, it can get very vivid during a winter.
Cameras tend to add their extra though.
A surprising thing to me was how the aurora can sometimes be still and sometimes move so fast. It is a strange experience. One would expect something that covers such a large part of the visible sky-dome to move slowly, but instead it can swipe around quite quickly ("like a fox's tail").
If you ever have the chance to see the Milky way from Namibia, the Andes, the Western Australian desert, you may revise your view there. The dust clouds and star streams extend far out and make it appear like "standing on the bridge of as starship". It looks very 3D. Still not colorful, but immersive and so much detail.
Alas, in the northern hemisphere, we've been pretty good eradicating nighttime darkness (and a lot else besides ...).
As someone who has never seem them, what I wish most people would do is attempt to edit said photos to 'about what it looked like to my eyes.'
You can find some online, but they range from 'just like the picture' to 'random fog', so one is left not knowing what to believe.
It varries significantly depending where you are. Both could be true for different people viewing them from different places.
These would be interesting data points based on season, location, and weather conditions nonetheless.
I’ve seen both.
Last night from London the most I could see with my naked eye was diffuse patches of faint pink and green - sometimes highlighted by marginally brighter white-pink streaks that cut across the patches. The camera however picked them up as dramatic bright pink/green columns of light with rarely any trace of the blackness of the sky.
When I was in Iceland a few years ago though - I distinctly remember being easily able to make out super bright and well define dancing wavy bands of bright green, pink, purple and orange (with high contrast compared to the surrounding dark sky) with my naked eye. The camera again picked up the same thing but with the blackness of the sky covered by a green /pink coloured background - something definitely brighter but less well defined that what I could see with my naked eye (and the camera images were not necessarily superior than what I could see in this case).
TL:DR; I’ve seen both versions of what you describe with my naked eye and it’s definitely not bullshit! When people say they can’t see anything like the pictures - I would have to guess that they either have never been in an area with significant activity or maybe didn’t have dark enough skies without light pollution.
In my back garden in london initially it felt like maybe I was just seeing remnants of having looked at a lightbulb and then looking at the sky. After a bit of eyes adjusting the pinks were very clear and the white streaks like rays of light you see in those kind of beams from heaven type pictures. The green was more on the horizon and initially needed the camera to show it at all, and then again after a while I could see feint green with the naked eye. Yes the camera showed it more, but the naked eye experience was also magical and I feel very lucky to have seen it on bbc news website by chance before going to bed. I watched it from 11:15pm to midnight when it seemed to vanish as if it was never there in the first place. I feel like I caught the ISS in a photo too but I can’t find definitive information it was overhead at 11:51pm uk time, so it probably wasn’t.
They'll never look exactly like the long exposure, ultra vibrant photos. However, when they are really strong you can see both greens and purples very distinctly with the naked eye.
One experience you can get in person when they're really strong is how fast they can dance around above you as well. I've found the dancing lights to the naked eye are much more astounding than in timelapses or videos, 1) because that's when they're most vibrant in person, and 2) because you can see just how fast and jittery and energetic they are, unlike in a video which is usually captured at much less than 30fps for low light and denoised and frames mashed together to create those soupy smooth videos and timelapses. Nice in their own way, but nowhere near the same experience.
And when they're very low energy they will just look like green grey clouds to the naked eye.
Source: live in the arctic
I've seen both impressive (colorful, bright, straight overhead and fast movement) as well as barely noticeable (colorless bands/sheets that "look like faint clouds but somehow odd". With the "odd" mostly meaning that they move different from clouds; not preferentially in wind (or any) direction, and often just around our eye's threshold. It also, sometimes, looks like a band of light pollution low along the northern horizon, when the green main aurora oval is "just" visible.
Few-seconds exposures on a digital camera bring the colors out that you may or may not see by eye if the aurora is weak.
Also, especially mid-latitudes, sometimes an Aurora display has moments of higher brightness with color, and then again "grey curtains".
The most impressive thing about stronger Aurora, to me, is the "fine structure", the fact you may have it well overhead (not just on the northern horizon) and the fast movements. It can look like "beads" running up and down the curtains, or "lances" being thrown from the sky, and line/streak structures are very sharply outlined, not like the soft blur in multi-second pictures. And the curtains can "wave" across the entire sky in a second then.
But I haven't seen enough Aurora to dare predict anything ... I cross my fingers.
Imo if the northern lights are strong, the live experience is superior to photos because of how they move, while photos are still images. But many times they are not as strong and they do not look like much with naked eye, while long exposure will catch more of it.
Not bullshit. When you see a strong one, it looks like all the amazing photos, and better because it’s moving and spanning the sky. Photos never capture the scale.
I had a similar thought about the sun’s corona during a solar eclipse, for some reason I thought people were using special photo processes to extract something that was hard to see without equipment. Then caught an eclipse and the corona blooms like a huge flower in the sky and it’s better than almost all the photos. I’m guessing the dynamic range of the corona makes it very hard to photograph anywhere near as good as what it looks like when you’re there.
I saw them yesterday mostly as light grey clouds. But at one moment, those clouds turned slightly red to me. I am at a very bright location and quite far to the south. So I only can assume, that their brightness was at the brink of color vision and that my eye wasn't perfectly adapted to the dark. In better circumstances and perhaps with a tiny bit more "signal", they should appear in colors.
One thing to consider is that when you run outside because you get a tip about northern lights, your eyes need about 20-30 minutes to fully adjust to darkness. If you do things like look at a phone display or camera display while waiting, that "timer" gets reset.
In my experience when the lights are strong (and your eyes have adjusted), they look a lot like the photos - not as saturated color-wise, but very bright.
Yeah, camera sensors (depending on filtering) are far more sensitive to the dim light of the aurora than our eyes. Still means you can get utterly amazing photography there already! :)
A couple of years ago in the middle of Norway (not south, not north, in-between) me and a friend saw in the news that there would be aurora borealis, which is not common in that part of Norway.
We were outside at like 2AM in the night that day trying to spot it but could see any hint of it for the life of us.
Finally we used his phone and long exposure to see what it would pick up and on the captured photo we saw shades of green like aurora borealis.
Quite fascinating, it was.
For what it's worth... growing up in Tromsø, we have auroras a few dozen times per winter usually.
They were always strong enough to be easily seen, often quite dramatic. It really does look like that if you're far enough north.
For sure. As mentioned though we were in the middle of Norway, not north.
Well, actually the proper term for where we were at is East Norway. And I guess by official standards the middle of Norway is further north than where I consider the middle of Norway to be.
To be very specific, we were in Gjøvik.
Here's a few crappy phone pics from near Oslo on a night (evening, around 19 I think) it was very visible with the naked eye. 0.5 seconds exposure.
https://www.flickr.com/search/?sort=date-taken-desc&safe_sea...
That’s awesome! Wish I get to see it that visible too.
I was lucky enough to be in Tromsø in February 2013 during the last solar cycle maximum. It was absolutely amazing, even a local who we happened upon near one of the fjords while he was cross country skiing - in the middle of the night - said that he had never seen such aurora. They were gold and purple along with the more common greens and reds that we had seen all week.
I was in Northern MN a couple years back when there was some decent aurora https://imgur.com/a/nBjdhZ9
What the camera caught was really impressive! Even with just a couple seconds exposure on a phone. But what the human eye saw was.... effectively a portion of the sky that was unusually bright and seemed to have some sort of movement. Like you stared at it and knew something was amiss, but nothing "impressive" to look at.
Come to the arctic circle during polar night, then you will see impressive.
Human eyes are basically black and white in low light since rod cells can't detect color.
Yeah, none of these other stories and photos are from reality
what am I expecting to see?
These are live webcams. At the time it was sent it was probably showing the aurora
Any place with that much snow in mid-May is just make believe to me at this point in time.