Holy Smeg!!!! Up in the sky...

3 hours out on a warm special spring night!

Stunning, all of them but my favourite is the one looking through the arch for the contrast and flash of green.

I haven’t stopped by for ages and logged in today hoping to see exactly this sort of thing.

Wow

My K-1 picked up 1800 clicks last night as I made a time lapse.

Unfortunately I missed the best part of the show.

Thanks guys


Ive got my timelapse kit with me, if we get repeat tonight!

Impressive.

But a question from someone who didn't see (or look for) last night's spectacle to someone who knows his way round astro photography: Did it really look like that? The reason I ask is that Mrs L and I once saw a spectacular, horizon-to-horizon, continually shape-shifting, auroral display from Iceland which the locals said was the best for many, many years (they weren't just saying it for the tourists, some were watching with us and their oohs and aahs were genuine). The colours were nothing like as bright or saturated as I'm seeing in most of the pictures on the internet from last night's display. So what is reality from last night and what is photographic processing (by camera or otherwise)?

Steve

Yes it does move but it is not visible to the naked eye, i did a 40 frame shoot for a stack (not processed it yet). This shows it moving if i move thru them quickly... and no our eyes do not see the colours. It just looks like very high whispy clouds.

This is a non processed image, the camera sees far morecolour than our eyes do.




This was shot with the camera facing north west'ish, all the action was from north west to north east and directly over head. Not north!

You get a sense of the colour rather than an actual vivid experience. I could certainly make out the redder regions against the green ones last night despite being close to a city centre. The detail that you get with a sensor isn't there though.

The time lapse was taken with a Pentax DA 10-17 on my K-1 at f/3.5, ISO 6400 and a shutter speed of 1s. The intervals were 3s. It definitely shows the jumping and dancing of the lights. In real time though they jump around a lot faster. I've seen vids taken using cameras with large sensors and small pixel counts (the Sony A7s series) and they show so much more movement.

In many respects, it's similar to doing DSO. The data is there. Yiu have process it, to bring it out.

Great set of photos Spad, you were lucky to get to see the Aurora like that. What time in the evening did you take these?

I think stacks or long exposures might blur detail. The K-1 is pretty useful even at higher ISOs so exposure times of around 0.5 - 2 secs will give you the best structure to the lights.

I was alluding to data being in the photo, and processing it to bringing out the detail and colour. Any ISO and/or exposure length with get you the data.

But....

I think your exposure lengths are far to short. I'd recomend a minimum of 10 seconds. Blurring is not really an issue if you are using lenses with a wide field, say 10 to 20mm. I used 15secs for each frame of the stack.it showed the movement in the aurora. Also you'll find the guys who do the aurora timelapses will be using 10 to 45 second exposures to get the saturation, but still retain the detail and movement when the timelapse is put together.

As for ISO... Most cameras have an optimum or sweet spot ISO for DSO work. I also find this works very well for night photography as well.

As for stacks.... in certain circumstances they are fantastic, especially so for enhancing star visibility and noise reduction. Detail is retained more than you'd think. Massively so for DSO!

Probably the most crucial thing about long exposure work, is allowing the sensor to cool to prevent pixel burning.


Thank you, and I was out between 11pm and 3am!

As an addendum....

I think using a longer exposure gives the image an ethereal quality that enhances the mystique of the aurora...

Very nice!!