Northern Lights pics!

IPT

IPT

Active member
Shooting the Aurora is a passion for me. Sadly the last few years have seen dwindling intensity. I did manage to get a few shots here and there, but most of the earlier years I was up her proved to be much more intense. I thought I'd share a few of them with you all. If you've never seen them live than you owe it to yourself. It is one of the most spiritual and amazing things I have ever had the privilege to watch (especially in the fall and spring when it isn’t sub-zero yet :)).

A-1.jpg


c.jpg
 
Cool. How long of an exposure was it? I think sun spot activity is down. Wonder if that has something to do with the lower Aurora intensity. I have heard that some people can actually hear the Aurora. You hear anything?

Ken
 
Looks really nice.

To answer kb27973's question, I dont think it's possible to hear northern lights. It isnt as if it's an explosion or anything, it's just electrons moving from one atom to another, which doesnt make sound.

I've been in Alaska my entire life, 29 years, and seen plenty of northern lights from way out in the boonies where there is no background noise at all except nature and I've never heard them :)
 
Exposures vary from 2 seconds to 30, depending on the intensity of the Aurora and if there is a moonlight or not. Recty is correct about what they are, and yes the Sunspot is down (a record low in fact). That is exactly why the activity has been so lame. It's usually an expolsion of a sunsopt that hurls all that solor energy to us (called a CME, aka: Coronal Mass Ejection) and that blasts our atmosphere with energy exciting the atoms and giving off light energy.

Like Recty, I have never heard them. There are old timers around here who swear to me they have heard them "crackle and pop" and such. Though apparently science has yet to prove that they are audible in any way. They can be bright enough to read by on a really good night. One night I thought the moon had crested a peak behind me because it got so bright so fast but it was just that the Auora took off.

I did make a small Mpeg once. The aurora was fairly static and pretty bright. I did 30 frames of 4 second exposures. It actually worked pretty well but I think I lost it on an old hard drive crash (all hail external backup drives).

This is the stuff I really miss....

explosion.jpg
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15021351#post15021351 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by kb27973
Cool. How long of an exposure was it? I think sun spot activity is down. Wonder if that has something to do with the lower Aurora intensity. I have heard that some people can actually hear the Aurora. You hear anything?

Ken
Click to expand...



Yes, the sunspot activity has everything to do with the northern lights. The sunspots created the intense magnetic storms that fuel the northern lights. The Sun goes through a solar cycle and we just happen to be coming out of the trough of that cycle. So in the years to come you will see more and more solar storms. You can go to www.spaceweather.com and they give daily updates of solar activity and give a good forecast of solar activity.
 
Well if you can get pics like that with the sun I wonder what the Aurora would look like if we lived next to this guy - well the fraction of a fraction of a second that we lived next to this guy...

The largest known star is VY Canis Majoris; a red hypergiant star in the constellation Canis Major, located about 5,000 light-years from Earth. University of Minnesota professor Roberta Humphreys recently calculated its upper size at more than 2,100 times the size of the Sun. Placed in our Solar System, its surface would extend out past the orbit of Saturn. Light takes more than 8 hours to cross its circumference!
Click to expand...

:)
Ken
 
A low pressure system currently south of Cuba may turn into the first tropical storm of 2009. This means waves for me.
NASA's twin STEREO satellites sent back pretty pictures of the first coronal mass ejection in the new active solar cycle. You witnessed the end of cycle 23 and are about to see the beginning of 24. I watched the satellites start their journey and blast into deep space from a favorite fishing hole. This means Northern Lights for you.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stereo/news/solarcycle24.html
 
kb27973 - man we'd be dead (probably literally). Even our sun has crippled communications in the past. From what I've read we are even more dependant now on infrastructure that will be adversely affected by solar storms. It's probably be BEAUTIFUL before we died from it though (lol).

TS - They've been saying cycle 24 started a while ago with the first reversal of the polarity on the most recent sun spots. Still, the sun is blank and devoid of any good activity A LOT (can't remember the % but it was high).

Like imrinkrat said though, suppossedly we are coming out of the lull. Wishful thinking never hurts right....
 
Awesome images Louis, thanks for sharing with us lower latitude dwellers. I think a page of your aurora images would be a beautiful addition to your website, much like the page on your reef tank.
 
Nice stuff Louis. Seeing that is a dream of mine. Do you have a couch with a pull-out bed?

:lol:
 
Doug, anytime man, anytime. I got the "Camper" version of the thermarest and it's like a damn air mattress. Last I read the good years for the peak of this cycle will not be until 2012-2013 though so don't buy your ticket just yet :).

It's a good dream to have. In fact, it was the Aurora that made want to come up here in the first place. The rest as they say "is history". Landscapes, as beautiful as they are, even with the changing seasons, stormy light and what not, are relatively static. The Aurora can be unbelievingly dynamic. Both in form and color, as well as intensity. If the hairs on the back of your neck don’t stand up in awe the first time you see it then you just can’t be wired properly. I still get that feeling during a good show.


Moonrise and Aurora

AK-NL-12-197.jpg


Self portrait (of sorts :))
AK-NL-13-211.jpg
 
I'd seen enough tree silhouettes and just wanted to try something different. I took a chance and really liked the results. It is kind of hard to find the right spot, with the lights moving and not being able to see the position of myself for the composure. Some guessing comes into play for sure. It's also pretty hard at times to find something to get high enough on the horizon line to make it work.

They used one image on Nature's Best Photography magazine in '04 for the cover (and an honorable mention in the people in nature category). That was pretty cool.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15030441#post15030441 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by TitusvileSurfer
I love those self portraits you do. That is just unbelievable.
Click to expand...


X2, and see, you're as big as the trees there too!!!

:lol:

Your site is very cool too. Thanks!!!!!


Edit: And that looks like the Superman pose!!!!!
 
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