Aurora forecast for new years eve.

Big Andy

Big Andy

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I don't know how strong it will be but it's forecast for the Aurora to show on new years eve following 2 x M1 solar flares earlier today sending a CME aimed directly towards the earth. It's also forecast clear skies for me in South Wales although it will have to be a big one to be visible here.
 
Will probable have complete cloud cover here :(
 
Aurora is being reported at KP6.7 so if there is any clear Sky north of the border you could be lucky :)
 
Have my fingers crossed, but doubt we'll see anything here - daughter is near Edinburgh, hopefully she might be able to see some...
 
We've got a clear sky here but spaceweather.com shows it missing the UK completely. I was going to head out onto Salisbury Plain but I think I'll stay in the warm instead.....
aurora-service.eu seems to be down at the moment.
 
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It's clear-ish here in mid-Wales this evening so there's a chance of seeing something tonight if it's there.

Judging by my experience last week there can be an aurora present but it can be invisible. Every so often take a picture and have a look at the result on the screen . It may show you something that the eyes are not sensitive enough to see.
 
Grabbed this around 10pm, a bit cloudy and cold but could see brightest parts with naked eye.

10431165_1167811956577268_3371491677393410041_o.jpg
 
^^ wow! Great shot and the orange car adds to it fantastically.
 
Just an example here of what last night's aurora was like in mid-Wales- nothing spectacular! Most of the purple had gone by this time but there's a hint of it still showing. The display on Monday last week was more colourful, really. The orange cloud would be from one of the nearby villages, I think.

_MG_1955.jpg
 
Marie,

You must get to see the aurora quite often. Do you have any rules of thumb for photographing it?

Last night I was using 3200 ASA, f4, and a variety of shutter speeds from 4 seconds to 15. I've had to increase the exposures by about 1 to 3 stops in LR, and interestingly the white balance was way off in the most underexposed images. say 5100 at -2.5 stops in comparison with about 3500 at -1 stop. The latter seemed correct to my eyes.
 
I tend to use live view on the 5D3 and meter off the brightest part of the image, whether that be a f/g light or the aurora itself.
With iso 1600 and a 1.4 aperture in live view I can shoot in av mode and let the camera choose the shutter speed which tends to be 6-8 secs. If histogram is too far left then something like +1.0 exp compensation will be added to bring it to more to the middle. This way there is a lot less noise in the shadows through having to increase exposure in pp.

White balance I set to auto but if there's artificial light (light painted f/g say) then that can make the wb look a bit yellow/green so I'll then drag it down to a more green look in pp.
 
canon_togger said:
I tend to use live view on the 5D3 and meter off the brightest part of the image, whether that be a f/g light or the aurora itself.
With iso 1600 and a 1.4 aperture in live view I can shoot in av mode and let the camera choose the shutter speed which tends to be 6-8 secs. If histogram is too far left then something like +1.0 exp compensation will be added to bring it to more to the middle. This way there is a lot less noise in the shadows through having to increase exposure in pp.

White balance I set to auto but if there's artificial light (light painted f/g say) then that can make the wb look a bit yellow/green so I'll then drag it down to a more green look in pp.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that, Marie. As I don't have a fast prime I'm limited to f4, which meant 3200 ISO and between 8 and 13 seconds. Not ideal!

Exposure was mainly guess work, in fact. I ended up taking " a reading" and then by trial and error adding 3 stops exposure compensation in camera and finally using manual.

Lets just hope there's another display before too long. Which forecasts do you use?
 
Thanks. I'll have to try www.spaceweather.com as well!

One of the first aurorae I saw was on Skye. It was my 40th birthday. I was staying in a hostel somewhere and I very excitedly told the owner that I seen it.

She said "Aye, I saw it just now when I was feeding the doog..." .......like it was a regular occurrence......
 
This is what we could see in South Pembrokeshire around midnight. Never had a go at photographing it before and was a last minute decision to go as the forecast at 2300 hrs jumped to a 7.4 Kp for midnight.

Stupidly I left my f2.8 at home, thought it was in the bag but had taken it out to clean. Didn't really know what shutter speeds to try so defaulted to my normal 30 secs at f4.

Not much to shout about but better than nothing and a good start to 2016.

This is 3 shots stitched together. Didn't really know how to PP it. Tried to keep it as It was in the camera without oversaturating the colours, just tweaking the WB and a couple of other bits.

Aurora-Borealis from the top of the Preselis
 
There is another show today according to the forecast. On the down side it looks like it will be at it's peak in the afternoon although it could run on into the evening and probably not as strong as the last one. There is also the fact that we have 100% cloud cover, rain, and no sign of that changing. :(
 
Gaz,

It looks like you got the green there and there's maybe just a hint of the purple as well? Was anything visible to the naked eye?

I was surprised at how much colour the sensor picked in cloud as well; there are a couple of pale glows in the sky to the north of here which are white to the eye, but very orange to the sensor. Street lights no doubt.
 
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