Among the flood of Auroral images
at Spaceweather.com, I thought the two below stuck out in particular - simply mesmerizing to look at. Mind boggling beautiful !
I also feel that the photographer has been doing very well in his post processing; the way it is representing the colors and brightness - without adding even more "drama" to it (which many photographers appear to do at Spaceweather.com) So, these auroras must indeed been exceptionally bright and unusual colorful (over Southeast Norway).
Digital cameras these days really capture the many finer nuances in colorful aurora (in combination with bright lenses and higher ISO)... which is such a great benefit - when comparing that to (daylight, 5500°K) balanced film material, we used in the older days of photography.
Janne Maj Nagelsen wrote:
This aurora was literally insane! I have never seen such strong auroras here where I live. Not to mention the colors. I mean look at the picture! Totally insane to be this far south in the country.
Taken by Janne Maj Nagelsen on November 5, 2023 @ Stamnes, Vaksdal, Norway
Janne Maj Nagelsen
September 1993, Umeå - Sweden
I personally have only
once witnessed super bright auroras. It was September 1993, when friends of mine went by car up to the Umeå region in Northern Sweden. The air was close to frost temperature... And in the beginning we saw weak to moderate bright, green auroras for several hours.
Then all of the sudden around midnight - a major "flare" literally erupted above our heads.
That curtain danced
wildly (with fast movements within) right above our heads, stretching from one and to the other end of the horizon - with mostly pale green colors, BUT on the lower side of that curtain - tiny "sparks" and "streaks" in all of the rainbow colors appeared to dance, giving the impression of thousands sparks. It was so.... beyond anything I had ever seen - that we too danced, literally, in the grass - screaming with youthful excitement and fascination.
The peak of this "flare" outbreak was very fast - too fast - and lasted perhaps 15-20 seconds at the most.
The light intensity within the flare, reminded me of the light levels you encounter during dull, overcast winter day in Scandinavia. (One photo demonstrates this well, as the auroras is as bright as the bright lights at the cottage) The flare pulled quickly away. Around round 10 minutes later, it had created two huge shining rings - covering the entire sky. I mean, one ring within another much bigger one, in an almost symmetric configuration. It was way too large for me to take images of.
I used an older type of medium format (6x6) camera called Mamiya C330 ƒ (looks like a Rolleiflex twin-eyed camera, with color film and a slight wide angle lens - but with relatively slow aperture ƒ3.5. So, exposure times at first where 40 sec to 2 minutes - but during the peak perhaps 10 seconds exposure time. I wasn't really equipped to take images of such large wonders covering... almost the entire sky. Nor did we anticipate any auroras coming - because the peak of 1989-91 was already behind us.
This is an example of the beginning that evening - 2-3 hours before the sudden outbreak.
Below:
I tried to capture the flare as it was just about to unfold, moving towards the zenith... but it was so fast moving, and i had to guess the exposure time in all this sudden excitement, yet unsure of how long or short the exposure should be (which means, this frame was underexposed)... The film itself was of daylight type (5500°K) like almost all films were made for daylight - therefore the variation in the color nuances were not very well captured. (I often feel that Auroras require a color balance around 3800°K to bring out the nuances)
A so called tungsten film (3200°K) would have been better for that back then.
Below:
This was perhaps 8-10 seconds after the peak outbreak above our heads, as the flare moved away again, but I could at least partially capture it against the backdrop of the star sign Auriga and some clouds. Notice that the brightness was as bright as the lights in the cottage. The older Mamiya Sekor 65mm f 3.5 lens design itself, when used at wide open aperture, created reflections when you have strong highlights in the frame - so, those are no ufo's *grin*
