Blogging the Aurora

As I promised a couple of days ago, here are some shots of the aurora. They were taken on the night of the 30th September 2005. The display was very impressive. Originally it had been very cloudy and Andrew and I were amazed at how bright the clouds were with the aurora behind them. Shortly afterwards the clouds started to clear away and we were treated to some great views, though none as bright as earlier. Tero came out from running his instruments to get some personal photos.

The display continued from about 10pm local time and we saw it fade and brighten a couple of times over the course of an hour or so. We also saw some black aurora that we were able to record with the DASI camera in the hut, though the timestamp on the tape is out slightly as we were not prepared to run at that point. There was still aurora around when we headed inside sometime after 11:30pm local time.

Once again I was using my digital Canon Power Shot S45. I jigged around with the exposure time in an effort to try and capture some of the more dynamic aspects of the show, unfortunately this didn't really work. The end results are nowhere near as good as some I have seen (e.g. Jouni Jussila), but I am quite pleased with some of them; especially those where you can make out the snow on the mountain and the radar dishes.


For this one I am looking right up the field line and you can see plenty of stars behind. I did try to capture some black aurora embedded in a diffuse patch a short while before I took this. Unfortunately I was too slow in setting up and missed it. I often try to get some other objects in with the aurora in order to give some perspective but this looked too good as it was.


In some of them you can clearly see that there are clouds still hanging around. It is a real shame that the longer exposure time tends to blur the fine detail of the arcs so much though. I'll have to have a fiddle with the various settings and try to improve it.

I think this one has to be my favourite. There is some great structure 'crowning' the mountain and the auroral arc extends right across the sky with distinct rays. The snow on the mountain shows up really well as do a few stars poking through from behind the green emission. You can just about make out the VHF antenna infront of the mountain, whereas the tree in the foreground creates a good border and perspective. The red light is not from any auroral emission (though we did see some lower red borders) and is instead the reflection of the city lights of Tromso.