Chasing the Aurora Borealis | Hacker News Reader

Chasing the Aurora Borealis

newyorker.com

28 pointswhocansay10 comments

Watching the northern lights with naked eyes was a unique experience for me because they are kind of different than what you see in photos.

They are very dim and flow very slowly. Human eye can easily see them with their details in real time, but to capture them in photos or videos, long shutter exposure is needed. As a result, they look bright and blurry. The videos are even worse; they are all time-lapses which are bright, blurry, and fast moving. In reality, you have to wait minutes to see the light changing its shape and flowing around.

If the aurora is very intense it can move unbelievably fast. And it can be (at least perceived as being) as bright as the most spectacular still images. This isn’t something that happens every night or even every month though. I grew up where they were very common and living further south now I miss them. To put the odds in perspective, I go up north several days every winter (see family at Christmas etc) and haven’t seen a decent aurora for 10 years.

Modern cameras are sensitive enough that they can take real time video of Aurora, like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ux3DMkbCrA

Whoa didn't think that was possible with an A7S!!! Guess that's what you get with an f1.4. Very nice.

> Human eye can easily see them with their details in real time, but to capture them in photos or videos, long shutter exposure is needed

Makes me want to see what people have done with the Sony A7 sII

I’ve had it since 2015 and its been the first camera I’ve used that can see better than me at night at maybe 1/30th of a second shutter speed. Coupled with vibration compensation and cleaner high ISO, just using it handheld it reveals many more stars in the sky than my eye adjusted too or would ever see.

Makes me think it could capture the aurora more accurately.

I wonder if anyone has done it

I visited Svalbard in February and the Northern lights were not only bright, but moved very quickly. Like a flowing river of light. Was really an incredible sight.

I plan to go back with a pro-grade camera to try and capture it even better.

They aren't always slow when really active! I was lucky enough to see some solid activity, and while it was mostly slow motion, it's sometimes quite quick!

The general solar maximum occurred during sunspot cycles in the 50s and it tentatively appears we are in a decline since the early 00s. Anyone lucky enough to have family with anecdotal evidence of auroras over the past 70-80 years?

My father claims to have witnessed aurora in Alabama as a kid, I'm guessing sometime in the 1950s. I was thinking this wasn't all that rural of an area either, although light pollution was arguably less than today. I myself saw it in North-central Ohio in 1999.

I saw them at least 3 times in the early 1980s in Wisconsin, but never since. I had an uncle who was very much into stargazing, so we'd often go out in the middle of the night to see meteor showers or the northern lights.

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