Knight of Clear Skies

Nice work having a go at presenting this in real-time, makes a good bridge between the visual experience and the more usual long-exposure timelapses. Something I found from the night of the 11th, the shorter the exposure the narrower the light pillars. Even in a two or three second exposure they are getting blurred out. I did see a video somewhere taken through night vision goggles which shows very rapid changes in structure. If I do get another opportunity to shoot a bright Aurora I'm going to take two cameras. I'll have the 14mm lens on one taking longer exposures but I'll open my 35mm lens up to f1.4 and set the exposure time as short as possible.

Thanks all. Sent my timelapse to BBC regional news (Spotlight) and they were kind enough to show it at the end of Sunday's programme.

Fantastic. The setting Moon helps me place this in time, love the way it turns into a crescent through the cloud as it reaches the horizon.

Good luck everyone, especially those who weren't able to get out last night.

Say some bright transient pillars appear several times last, way to the South of me. I was wondering how far down it reached.

Saw a capybara and the aurora yesterday, that's a pretty good day in my book. Was this the brightest display at this latitude since 2023? Was wonderful to look at, at times I didn't know which way to turn. Here's by 1h30min timelapse with a 14mm lens, my camera battery finally gave up at about 2:00 AM. Sent it to the BBC and they showed it at the end of the regional news broadcast (Spotlight) tonight. As a bonus, caught a couple meteors right at the end. PC is churning away now running some Photoshop batch processing on the 712 frames, to bring out a bit more structure.

Incredible display from Cornwall, could see some shades of green, purples and occasionally blue in the light pillars. Didn't know where to look at times, even had some bright transient pillars appear due South. Took about 1,700 shots for various timelapses using my 14mm and 35mm lenses.

Aurora 19th Apr 2024 wide.mp4 Caught the tail-end of the display on Thursday night, enough to make a short timelapse which is best viewed on repeat. I was pleased to pick up a bit of structure this time.

Very nice, what software so you use to create the star trail animation please?

Well done Lee. I missed this as I was dealing with some unexpected smoke, and then found my camera battery was almost dead. But I did get some decent images last night.

Thanks. I imaged it myself last week and was wondering what it was. According to this link the name is misleading and it's not really an aurora: https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2021/11/22/3308/ "Auroras appear when charged particles rain down from space, hitting the atmosphere and causing it to glow like the picture tube of an old color TV. SARs form differently. They are a sign of heat energy leaking into the upper atmosphere from Earth’s ring current system."

I missed the brightest part of the display (took me a few minutes to get up the road where there is a clear horizon to the North) but picked up a fair bit with the camera from Cornwall. Was still visible as of half an hour ago.

Well, that's just lovely, a churning roiling dust field. I don't remember seeing a shot quite like this, showing such a coherence of the branching dust structures. Could be a consequence of such a wide field of view and scale of the region it shows. Is that all of the Perseus molecular cloud in view? Would be interesting to compare the distribution of the radio HI signal. Here's a slightly wider field of view in IR from WISE (W1/W2 channels): https://viewer.legacysurvey.org/?ra=62.1268&dec=31.2590&layer=unwise-neo6&zoom=6 The IC138/NGC1333 region is particularly interesting in IR: https://viewer.legacysurvey.org/?ra=54.4457&dec=31.8272&layer=unwise-neo6&zoom=8

Lovely image. There is a lot going on in this part of the sky in IR: https://viewer.legacysurvey.org/?ra=53.7107&dec=32.1558&layer=unwise-neo6&zoom=8 A project I'd like to do sometime is have a go at blending the WISE data into a widefield shot of this region.

Happy New Year everyone. Here's a wintery view of the Hurlers triple stone circle under a bright Moon, looking North towards the bright stars of the Plough. The purple glow on the horizon is a bright aurora. The Hurlers are a unique triple stone circle on Bodmin Moor dating to the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age. https://www.caradonobservatory.com/articles/the-hurlers-by-moonlight