I live in rural very northern England. It’s incredible, clear with the naked eye. iPhone 14 camera with 3s exposure is out of this world (pun intended, but misleading)
Since we're all scientists here, I'll report a negative from central York. My wife and I stood up in the attic looking out of the Velux for 10 minutes. It was dark, clear and we were could see from NE-ish to SE-ish. We couldn't really call it. A very subtle effect on a 10s smartphone exposure, mayyybe? I will compare with tonight.
We once rented a beautiful, slightly remote house on a beach outside Reykjavik and one night, the sky danced for us. So I don't feel hard done-by.
Interesting, maybe it depends on when you were looking? Also central York and we popped outside just after half eleven and the aurora was very visible to the naked eye, not in full multicolour but very clearly not a cloud, quite thick and radiating out from a centre in the sky almost all the way down to the horizon. We have a reasonably dark place we can look from near us (and where we got some photos on a smartphone camera that show a sky full of vivid purples and greens) but I could see it clearly enough from right outside our house even with the bright led streetlights all around.
After 20 minutes it faded from view almost entirely and we went inside. I have no idea if it came back or what it was like beforehand, maybe we got very lucky or maybe it came and went through the night?
I’m 5 miles to the east ! (Dunnington) and was gutted to hear this morning that I’d missed an amazing display here last night. Many people in the village saw the aurora in varied colours - greens, purples, pinks. Incredible photos… it sounds like it was just before midnight that it really kicked off.
Yeah, it's often easy to make it look much better on camera than what it did in real life. Something to keep in mind if one feel one missed out, heh.
Also, timelapses of long exposures can give a wrong impression of how it moves. But has for a long time been the only way to actually see a video of it.
It's often not that slow and wavy in real life. It's more like watching an orchestra play, where suddenly someone plays a flute in the corner, and then a few moments later a trombone sounds from the other side. It's dramatic and beautiful when it's really on.
But modern video cameras are now good enough to capture this in real time, so hopefully we'll see more realistic videoes.
In less rural northern England, it was faintly visible to me. If I hadn't been looking for the aurora specifically, I would have assumed it was a weird cloud. After walking a bit away from street lights I could make out a south facing arc spanning the sky directly overhead which went away within a few minutes.
mattbee|1 year ago
We once rented a beautiful, slightly remote house on a beach outside Reykjavik and one night, the sky danced for us. So I don't feel hard done-by.
davejohnclark|1 year ago
After 20 minutes it faded from view almost entirely and we went inside. I have no idea if it came back or what it was like beforehand, maybe we got very lucky or maybe it came and went through the night?
danw1979|1 year ago
matsemann|1 year ago
Also, timelapses of long exposures can give a wrong impression of how it moves. But has for a long time been the only way to actually see a video of it.
It's often not that slow and wavy in real life. It's more like watching an orchestra play, where suddenly someone plays a flute in the corner, and then a few moments later a trombone sounds from the other side. It's dramatic and beautiful when it's really on.
But modern video cameras are now good enough to capture this in real time, so hopefully we'll see more realistic videoes.
docapotamus|1 year ago
Can’t find my DSLR unfortunately otherwise it’d be on the tripod.
Had to wake the 6 year old for him to see this, once in a life time type of thing
AlexAndScripts|1 year ago
docapotamus|1 year ago
penteract|1 year ago
jon_adler|1 year ago