Aurora Borealis photos

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HorsePunchKid

[H]ard|Gawd
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Nov 6, 2003
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Here in central Illinois we had a great display of the Aurora Borealis, lasting from around 7PM until at least 12AM Sunday night. Thanks to mpcamer for getting me off my ass to go get some photos :). Larger versions available upon request, as always. They didn't come out all that well, but not bad for my first attempt, I suppose. (Well, second, technically, but the first under controlled conditions.)

Showing some banding in the aurora (and also the CCD :rolleyes: ), but unfortunately that effect had faded significantly by the time I got out of town (not a fan of light pollution :mad: ). I'm not sure what's causing the circular pattern that looks like interference fringes, but it happened in most of the exposures.
DSCF5675_aurora_banding_sm.jpg


Interestingly, the red was pretty much invisible to my eye, but it showed up well in the photographs.
DSCF5680_aurora_colorful_sm.jpg


An RGB breakdown of the previous image.
DSCF5680_aurora_rgb_sm.jpg


A lousy, hand-stitched panorama. Approximately 150 degrees of horizon. Links to larger version in order to keep this page at a reasonable width. You can see the constellations Cygnus off to the left (northwest) and Ursa Major off to the right (northeast).


Anyone else here ever tried to get photos of aurorae?
 
my dad just told me there should be more tonight, atleast thats what he heard on the radio..
 
yeah we had them here in Minnesota

If you would have looked straight UP. You would have seen a wierd looking "burst" that looked like a bug splatter.....on planet earth :D
 
we can see it right now where i live, not that bright yet but its fairly visible. :cool:
 
This photo is from Tuesday night. You can still see there's some auroral activity, but unfortunately, the skies were not very clear. That wouldn't be so much of a problem without all the sodium lamps :mad:.
DSCF5691_poor_conditions_sm.jpg


diredesire said:
i wonder if that red stuff is UV?
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Actually, both the red and green colors are from oxygen. Basically, electrons from the solar wind (or knocked free by the solar wind?) slam into oxygen molecules. This causes the electrons in the oxygen molecules to move up to one of two energy levels. The higher energy level transition corresponds to green (higher-frequency light) and the lower level transition corresponds to red (lower-frequency). The blue is from nitrogen, apparently. I'd bet there are other colors, like ultraviolet, that correspond to higher- or lower-energy transitions, but if there are, I don't know of any images in those frequencies.
 
Meh, this is a little better. It takes out the gridding and the lens distortion right dead center of the photograph.

aurora.jpg
 
Is there any chance you could elaborate on how the noise and distortion was removed? A number of my aurora shots produced centered rings that were quite distracting.
 
emorphien said:
UV should not be red.
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As I hopefully explained, it is not UV. It's light emitted from stimulated oxygen. It's 630nm, which is in the red portion of the visible spectrum. Quite apart from the point which you were perhaps trying to make, that ultraviolet is definitely not red. :)
 
HorsePunchKid said:
Quite apart from the point which you were perhaps trying to make, that ultraviolet is definitely not red. :)
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That it the point I was making. I realize the colors come from energized particles in the atmosphere.

I saw it a bit, it was spectacular (to me) even though we didn't get the best here in NY. If only it didn't get cloudy on the day I wandered out with a camera. That was upsetting.
 
Sanfam said:
Is there any chance you could elaborate on how the noise and distortion was removed? A number of my aurora shots produced centered rings that were quite distracting.
Click to expand...

neatimage
 
That's pretty nice, Mr. Baz. Taking out that gridding and noise didn't effect the striations in the aurora as much as I would have expected.

Anyway, for a bit of horn-tooting, the local paper ran the second photo last Friday. Next up: the Leonids!
 
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