Post your Aurora photos
- Thread starter BF Hammer
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BF Hammer
Senior Member
Watching with bare eyes, it kind of was underwhelming. You could easily mistake the Aurora last night for thin, wispy clouds moving through. Color was only noticed in photos. But I did see from my home in the city. Just had to use my phone to confirm it. LOL
blackstar
Senior Member
If so, in which direction you would turn to find it? North?
BF Hammer
Senior Member
Aurora was directly overhead for me last night, but it did not extend too far south. Some of my photos were east, some west, some north. Ordinarily I would try looking at the north horizon when the Kp factor is lower.
I had some challenges. Rain moved through at sunset, and the clouds were only breaking up about 10:30pm. That is why the Aurora was looking kind of like more clouds to me. I suppose if I properly let my eyes dark-adapt I may have seen the color more, but still I could see the form even if it looked cloud-like.
Tonight is a maybe for a repeat. The most current trend I see is the storm is fizzling-out early. Forecasts still say less-intense than last night, but still a major chance to viewing. I'm glad I made the effort last night.
https://www.gi.alaska.edu/monitors/aurora-forecast
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/auroral-activity.html
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Dawg Pics
Senior Member
I was out looking tonight, but there is probably too much light pollution. I tried long exposures, but I started getting weird color banding, and one image had really bad banding and a black line at the bottom of the image. I don't know what was going on with that.
The fog was rolling in and caused light scatter, so I gave up. I might go take a peak now that it is after midnight, but I am not holding my breath on seeing anything.
Folks out in the desert around Anza-Borrego could see it last night, but not very bright. They also said they could see better with their phones.
The fog was rolling in and caused light scatter, so I gave up. I might go take a peak now that it is after midnight, but I am not holding my breath on seeing anything.
Folks out in the desert around Anza-Borrego could see it last night, but not very bright. They also said they could see better with their phones.
Dawg Pics
Senior Member
Nice. I saw a really nice image taken at Joshua Tree. I think it had Joshua trees, the aurora and Starlink in it. That or it was a plane with blinking lights.
BF Hammer
Senior Member
It was not so much light pollution as much as the Aurora fizzled out overnight. I have been using a phone app for tracking Aurora which is half science data and half social media. You can see live check-ins where people report Aurora and also attach photos. All the new reports Saturday were late check-ins from the previous night. The time stamps on photos told the story.
I stayed home based on that. Some overnight reports are there this morning from Canada and very rural USA. But faint and down on the horizon in photos. If you check the NOAA space weather animated globe showing Aurora history for the past day it was flickering like a bad florescent light tube as the energy ran out.
Bob Blaylock
Senior Member
Last night, @Seanette and I set out in hope of some slim chance of seeing, or at least photographing, the aurora. We knew it was a long shot; we live probably too far south (though there were reports of it being seen from the Bay Area, a bit farther south than we are), and too close to a big city. I figured that even if we couldn't see anything with our eyes, that with a long exposure, my camera might catch something useful.
The plan was to drive northward from Sacramento, along the I-5/99, until we found a place that seemed dark enough, and then from there, to look for a place to safely pull off the road.
We wound up at 38°52'24.7"N 121°36'54.7"W, along the Garden Highway. Looking south, back toward Sacramento, we could see a lot of light pollution from the city, but looking north, the sky looked dark and clear.
I set my D3200 on a tripod, facing due north, using Polaris as my reference, and took several shots.
This one was 30 seconds, ƒ/3.5, ISO 100, with the lens zoomed out to 18mm. I did catch some glow in the sky, but I think it more likely that it was light pollution from Yuba City, about 17 miles away, than that it was aurora.
By the way, here's a tip for using the 18-55mm lens that was originally includes with the D3200, for astrophotography; probably applicable to several other of Nikon's low-end Autofocus-S lenses. You want the lens, focused, of course, at infinity, but with this lens, there's no obvious, reliable way to do so.
The trick that I figured out is this:
Because the lens is set to autofocus, it will stay where it is, until the camera tells it to focus differently. If you set the switch on the lens to manual focus, then the focus adjustment is free to move, and does so easily enough that you can't count on it to stay where it was last focused.
But the camera, being set to manual focus, won't tell the lens to focus.
The lens set to autofocus, and the camera set to manual, effectively locks the lens at the point where it is focused.
The plan was to drive northward from Sacramento, along the I-5/99, until we found a place that seemed dark enough, and then from there, to look for a place to safely pull off the road.
We wound up at 38°52'24.7"N 121°36'54.7"W, along the Garden Highway. Looking south, back toward Sacramento, we could see a lot of light pollution from the city, but looking north, the sky looked dark and clear.
I set my D3200 on a tripod, facing due north, using Polaris as my reference, and took several shots.
This one was 30 seconds, ƒ/3.5, ISO 100, with the lens zoomed out to 18mm. I did catch some glow in the sky, but I think it more likely that it was light pollution from Yuba City, about 17 miles away, than that it was aurora.
By the way, here's a tip for using the 18-55mm lens that was originally includes with the D3200, for astrophotography; probably applicable to several other of Nikon's low-end Autofocus-S lenses. You want the lens, focused, of course, at infinity, but with this lens, there's no obvious, reliable way to do so.
The trick that I figured out is this:
- First, with the lens cap on, and autofocus enabled press the shutter button halfway, to get the lens to try to focus. It will give up, of course, but where it stops when it gives up, is at infinity.
- Next, go to the camera menu, and set the camera to manual focus. Leave the switch on the lens set to autofocus.
Because the lens is set to autofocus, it will stay where it is, until the camera tells it to focus differently. If you set the switch on the lens to manual focus, then the focus adjustment is free to move, and does so easily enough that you can't count on it to stay where it was last focused.
But the camera, being set to manual focus, won't tell the lens to focus.
The lens set to autofocus, and the camera set to manual, effectively locks the lens at the point where it is focused.
BF Hammer
Senior Member
@Bob Blaylock : I agree that is more likely the glow of urban light pollution. Looks like what I have also captured with long exposure toward a town.
My way to get to infinity is to get an assist from LiveView. Set to manual focus, activate LiveView, put the focus square on a bright star. Now use the zoom-in button to enlarge that star as far as you can. Adjust the focus ring to make the star shrink to a minimum size point (it grows again beyond infinity). Now press the center button on the direction pad to reset LiveView. Looking through a tiny viewfinder in the dark is a rotten experience so I do all my work with LiveView and the rear screen.
On Friday, I tried 10, 8, and 6 seconds for shutter. 6 was working best, I should have gone to 4 seconds and bumped ISO to 6400. Aurora moves a bit faster than I thought. Motion blur was a thing. But I only have that luxury because I used my 15mm f/2.8 Carl Zeiss lens.
My way to get to infinity is to get an assist from LiveView. Set to manual focus, activate LiveView, put the focus square on a bright star. Now use the zoom-in button to enlarge that star as far as you can. Adjust the focus ring to make the star shrink to a minimum size point (it grows again beyond infinity). Now press the center button on the direction pad to reset LiveView. Looking through a tiny viewfinder in the dark is a rotten experience so I do all my work with LiveView and the rear screen.
On Friday, I tried 10, 8, and 6 seconds for shutter. 6 was working best, I should have gone to 4 seconds and bumped ISO to 6400. Aurora moves a bit faster than I thought. Motion blur was a thing. But I only have that luxury because I used my 15mm f/2.8 Carl Zeiss lens.
Scott Murray
Senior Member
BF Hammer
Senior Member
Looks like you got a bit of Milky Way there also @Scott Murray
Scott Murray
Senior Member
Yeah a little bit, I didn't have time to muck around as I had to get back inside and look after the daughter while my wife got so time to herself.
BF Hammer
Senior Member
As I recover from flu that had me home-bound this past week, I dove back into my photos. Really, nearly all photos were good that night, but I kind of rushed my processing out of excitement to share.
I processed every last shot I took that night and I have them hosted now. Here I wanted to show some stuff I fixed. For starters, I had the white balance left on the camera setting, and the auto WB just left things far too green. Had to straighten the images some in nearly each photo. And I stretched the exposure some for each.
Here are 3 photos I took in a row. I have the JPG straight from the camera 1st, then the processed image from the RAW file.
Those are basically "outtakes" with the 2 cars painting the scene with headlights and taillights. But we really see how the magenta tones in the Aurora was lost in the auto WB setting. Easy to recover from a RAW file. In this case in order to get close I sampled WB from one of the stars and fine-tuned it from there. I then set all the images to that color white.
I processed every last shot I took that night and I have them hosted now. Here I wanted to show some stuff I fixed. For starters, I had the white balance left on the camera setting, and the auto WB just left things far too green. Had to straighten the images some in nearly each photo. And I stretched the exposure some for each.
Here are 3 photos I took in a row. I have the JPG straight from the camera 1st, then the processed image from the RAW file.
Those are basically "outtakes" with the 2 cars painting the scene with headlights and taillights. But we really see how the magenta tones in the Aurora was lost in the auto WB setting. Easy to recover from a RAW file. In this case in order to get close I sampled WB from one of the stars and fine-tuned it from there. I then set all the images to that color white.
BF Hammer
Senior Member
Here's a link to the album hosted on Nikon Image Space. It appears to finally be working after the updates last week.
https://img.gg/w99EFtG
https://img.gg/w99EFtG