What auroras really look like

What the Aurora Really Looks Like from Phil Hart on Vimeo.

When you look through a telescope at a nebula, you could be disappointed for feeling a little disappointed. You're used to seeing those amazing Hubble pictures, or even ones by local astrophotographers. But instead what you are looking at could usually best be described as…well…a bit of fog or smoke. Maybe the barest hint of colour.

Yet a photo of the same subject, even one just a few seconds long, can have beautiful reds, greens, blues.

So what gives? Essentially your eyes are viewing in real time, while your camera can take in orders of magnitude more light. And then we photographers go and enhance the effect inside Photoshop. Not changing the shot, mind you—just enhancing what is already there.

Knowing this, I've often wondered what viewing auroras would be like 'in the flesh'. Timelapses of writing curtains of vivid greens, reds, purples and pinks look fantanstic, but what would I actually see if I saved some (many many) pennies to travel chasing auroras?

Significant chance of auroras tonight through mid-latitudes

Spaceweather.tv aurora projection

The wonderful Dr Tamitha Skov of Spaceweather.tv is reporting that we have good chances of visible auroras in the mid latitudes from tonight and through the next couple of nights.

For Australia, this means as far north as Sydney.

Click on this picture to click through to Dr Skow's full video report:

Of course you will want to try to capture such a rare event on camera. You'll need to get away from city light pollution, somewhere high with an unobstructed view to the south.

Set your camera on a fixed tripod. Put the camera in Live View mode and zoom right in on a bright object. At the moment, Venus, Jupiter and the crescent moon are all very bright in the early evening to the north-west. Set your camera focus to manual and get these targets as sharp as you possibly can. Then zoom right back out, being very careful not to touch the camera focus ring.

Take a tour of dwarf planet Ceres

Enigmatic bright spots within a crater on Ceres. Photo by NASA JPL on 6 June 2015 at 4400 kilometres altitude,
Resolution 410 metres per pixel.

NASA's Dawn robot entered orbit around dwarf planet Ceres on 6 March 2015.

It's the first spacecraft to visit two distinct interplanetary bodies, after first spending 14 months studying the smaller dwarf planet Vesta in 2011 and 2012.

The Dawn mission team are currently performing mapping orbits at around 13,600 kilometres out and navigational imaging about 5100 kilometres out. Once complete, Dawn will start edging into closer orbits.

NASA has combined images from these orbits to date into this wonderful flyover video released on 8 June:


At 15 seconds in, you'll see the mysterious bright spots (see photo above) in the base of a medium-sized crater that have so intrigued people the world over since they were first imaged months ago as Dawn approached Ceres. Nasa scientists are wondering if it could be a volcano, a geyser or cryo-volcano, shiny rock (as in glassy like molten from an impact), ice or salt.