PSA: aurora on red alert

Yeah I didn’t take any pics, just gawped. Not a fan of the ‘no filter’ instabangers that didn’t use a filter but did benefit from 19 layers of AI-powered enhancements

I hope your hearing never fails you and you need a bit of augmentation to be able to hear music or birdsong properly. Has to be authentic 😉

Plain silly 🤪 

@scuttler I think the second pic is a Global Hypercolor T shirt stretched over a beer gut.

But NOBODY has seen anything like what is shared with their naked eye. And yet there seems to be a tacit agreement that this phenomenon happened when in fact it did not. Would we accept this in any other context – news stories about something that didn’t happen, photos that are completely unrepresentative of reality? Your thoughts?

Of course it happened, I could see it happening, I could see faint shades of colour, and as I said, I have seen the colours with my naked eyes, and I had someone with me and we both saw the same thing. But at a time when it was early in the morning in mid-winter with no light pollution. Taking a colour photograph then would have involved having a film camera on a tripod, trying to estimate exposure times and apertures, then waiting to have the film developed, hoping something might be on the film. As pointed out, cameras and eyes are reacting to photons produced by electromagnetic radiation stimulating gas atoms in the atmosphere, just to different degrees, and in different ways.

^ so true!

Classic

Of course it happened, I could see it happening,

But

I could see faint shades of colour,

So in fact it (the lurid colours depicted in these images)  didn’t.

I hope your hearing never fails you and you need a bit of augmentation to be able to hear music or birdsong properly. Has to be authentic 😉

If silly analogies about sound are your thing, a more accurate one would be to say that you claimed Ted Nugent was playing next door, whereas in fact it was a sparrow tweeting in the next county.

What about of Joe Cocker was playing two doors along?

I don’t think it’s that silly, but whatever.

Pissing on others chips however. I found it a wonderful experience and don’t like being told I didn’t really see it but also whatever

So in fact it (the lurid colours depicted in these images)  didn’t.

Yes, they did, my eyes weren’t sensitive enough to see them. Other people in different places, did.

But honestly, this discussion is taking on aspects of philosophy; tell me DrJ, if a tree falls in a forest, and there’s nobody there to hear it, did it make a noise?

Did it?

You’re so smart, you tell me.

Oh, and which lurid colours? Mine aren’t, they’re an accurate representation of how auroras look, as can be seen in photos from literally all over the world. Some, very clearly, have had a lot of buggering about done to them. I never, apart from occasional cropping, futz around with my photos – I’m too sodding lazy!

Dunno if it’ll work, but here’s a link from someone in the States showing a photo of how aurora usually look to the human eye.

https://x.com/thegaryarandall/status/1789889902454161581?s=61

As I said before, in 1982, I saw an aurora with colours, reds and greens, with some purple, quite clearly, with no enhancement or artificial aids. That, though, was a pitch-black sky at somewhere past 1.30am, not just before 11pm, with some sky glow from the lights of Bristol twenty or so miles away.

#aurora

Talking about it to people at work, who understand the physics and the ‘philosophy’ about whether using an instrument to measure something is valid. One comment made that I want to pass on to correct a misconception, me included. It’s not the sensitivity of the sensors to light and colours that makes the difference, in fact our eyes (even shagged ones) are generally better than cameras. It’s just our eyes are permanently on video mode, with a very high refresh rate whereas the cameras can gather longer exposures.

One could argue that since a camera sensor is arguably the more accurate representation of what’s actually happening, using a phone on long-exposure mode is the best way to view it.

The philosophical attitude doesn’t bother me. I can’t see microscopic items, or wavelengths outside of a tiny range, or things a long way away, but with the right instruments I can and it doesn’t stop me thinking they’re incredible.

The simple fact is that the bits of your eye that see colour aren’t good at night. It took me 30 minutes of night adaptation before I could see the red and purple shades on Friday night.

Yes, they did, my eyes weren’t sensitive enough to see them

That’s kind of the point. Your eyes (our human eyes) don’t see everything, and usually it’s clear that what we are being shown is not what we’d expect to see – for example video of war zones taken using night vision equipment.

it doesn’t stop me thinking they’re incredible.

Nor me (as I said above). The difficulty (if that’s the right word) is that people are led to believe that something (sky filled with bright coloured visible light)  happened when it did not (as shown in CountZero’s link).

The simple fact is that the bits of your eye that see colour aren’t good at night.

Well, indeed. It’s a design issue with our eyes, not that some eyes are defective.

Go to an area with proper dark skies, on a clear night… look up at the stars. Now, to capture what your eyes will take in will require a long exposure on a camera. It still won’t match. Same with this.

Trying to match human experience with a photo, at night, especially of the sky, is not a simple task.

The camera may not lie, but it is not the human eye.

Here’s a piece by an astrophotographer on why Aurora don’t look very good to the naked eye. Pretty much all ready covered, but useful knowledge from someone who has a clue.

https://theconversation.com/why-do-the-aurora-look-better-through-a-camera-and-how-do-you-spot-a-fake-image-qanda-with-an-astrophotographer-229974

In hindsight, our household should have made more effect to spot it on the intense night (Fri night?), given seeing it in Hampshire shouldn’t be a frequent thing. Plus there was no sign of it on our Norway/Iceland cruise way back in August ’08.

A bit like the cartoon above, I’ve seen it often enough that I couldn’t be arsed heading out. Sort of wish I had though as it was particularly stong and it was a warm evening whereas it’s often freezing and you don’t want to be standing about for long.

Red alert on the aurorawatch app.

500nT, whatever that means. Don’t know how that compares to last week.

Last week hit nearly 1500nT if I remember right!

Yes 1500 on Friday and then 500 on Saturday when nothing was visible down here

I’ll still be checking just in case

Yes 1500 on Friday and then 500 on Saturday when nothing was visible down here

Balls. Might open the red wine and stay at home rather than trying to go out somewhere dark then.

Coronal mass ejection inbound!

Expected to arrive tonight according to the Met Office.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/specialist-forecasts/space-weather

Maybe not

https://www.spaceweather.com/

Thanks @scotroutes. Good info!

No mention on stargazerslounge

The most recent aurora information I’ve seen seems to indicate it’s centred on central North America, so sadly we’re shit out of luck this time.

No chance here, anyway, ‘cos it’s cloudy with rain forecast in the next hour or so. I’m still incredibly excited about the photos I managed to take back in May, my expectations were very low indeed, so to see the results I got once I was able to stick my phone on charge, and have access to wifi, so the photos could upload to my cloud storage and I could see them on my iPad was jaw-dropping; even the first ones I took in the village with a lot of light from the pub, there’s a green/red glow in the sky which I could see with my unassisted eyesight, which encouraged me to drive out away from the light from the houses.
Once there, I could see the shafts of different densities of light, just not the brightness of the colours, because there’s a fair amount of light from North Bristol, around the Bradley Stoke area; sadly I don’t live in a Dark Skies location so I have to rely on the sensitivity of modern technology and it’s ability to allow handheld long exposures. I didn’t think to take my little tripod, I might have been able to take longer exposures and picked up more of the starscape, like the Milky Way. *shrugs* In all the years I’ve been taking photos, I’ve never taken any like these, and unless I’m really, really lucky I don’t think I will again. These two were taken in the village, the first was among the first I took, by the duck pond, the second about a quarter of a mile along the road out of the village, and you can see how much light there was in the sky. They’re not that different to what I could see, just none of the subtle details and richness of colour.

Some red alerts with high numbers kicking off over the last 24 hours, 797nT this afternoon.

Currently on a campsite high in the north Pennines, wide 360 vistas, clear skies, fingers crossed for later.

And there’s a good chance of many Perseid meteors tonight, and the next couple of nights, too. Keep an eye out to the northeast after dark

Ballater last night was impressive, just before 12. I did see a few asteroids but got bored and bitten so called it a night. Photo colours were better than naked eye but curtains of light were more visible with naked eye.

CBA to work out how to post pics.

Dang it, alerts faded saying “unlikely” around 8-9pm. Woke up to high chance alerts from 10pm+. One day I’ll see it.

CBA to work out how to post pics

See the wee picture icon in the text editor controls…

As @jimmy

I was out in East Sussex till around midnight, but was a bit disappointing as far as aurora and Persieds went . No real sign of either, compared to last night when there were loads (but no aurora)

Stars were still amazing though.

I finally saw it last night about 11pm in a campsite at the end of the Llŷn.  It looks nothing like the pictures.  Enormous pale sheets blocking out stars filling half the sky appearing and moving slowly.  The scale of it was the most striking. I’m still buzzing today. I did get pictures but they look like everyone else’s pictures and are not representative!  I’ve wanted to see this my whole life.

Yeah the first time you see them it’s a very impressive thing. Every time is different, and I reckon once you’ve seen them once, more come along all the time!

What molgrips said is how I felt when it all went off a couple of months back.

I’ve just landed in trondheim for a few days working. Hope it picks up again…