Most of Europe is glowing pink under the aurora | Hacker News Reader

Most of Europe is glowing pink under the aurora

foto-webcam.eu

1,623 pointsluispa378 comments

I feel I need to report my experience from Denmark, Jutland.

It started with white broad streaks, which most of all looked like fog, but then perhaps after 10 minutes or so, we saw colors of red, purple and green begin to emerge from the these streaks. Most astoundingly it all seemed to emanate from a fluctuating point in the middle of the sky. If you looked closely at this point you could see it fall into itself, morphing and shifting continuously.

We went around the house and we could purple streaks at the top and orange to red patches at the bottom of the sky.

Colors observed: Whitish blue, Green, Purple, Red, and Orange

An absolutely a beautiful experience.

I was out flying a camera drone on the river Dee between Liverpool and North Wales filming the sunset, when I started getting magnetic interference warnings. At the same time, I started to see flashes in the sky. Then my vision was filled with sparkling lights. A few minutes later I got an aurora warning from my brother and the aurora app. KP 8-9

As the sun went down I was waking through a woodland. I thought the dark would help my eyes to see the aurora, and I could point my camera away from the light pollution of Liverpool and maybe catch some colour with a long exposure.

Suddenly, I realised the colour of the aurora was coming through the trees, and getting brighter. I wasn't expecting it to be visible to naked eye like this. In these latitudes the advice is to set your camera to highest iso and slowest shutter speed and hope to catch a little colour. I wasn't expecting this! So I packed up quick and ran through the woods and into open fields. There, directly above me was this intense white light, with white arms forming a sort-of cross. The longest arm formed an arch over the whole sky, and where they reached the earth, on either side they became colourful, like a twinkling rainbow stretching out to space.

I didn't have the equipment or the wits to get a good photo. I just threw myself on the ground and lay on my back watching.

Wildest thing I ever saw. Absolutely awesome.

When I regain my composure, I will upload some photos somewhere (where, though?) and edit this comment.

> and edit this comment.

You have like 30min to edit and there's a timeout for replies too so maybe put the link in your profile if it gets later <3

You did the right thing, the correct way is to just enjoy it with your eyes. There are enough photos and timelapses on the net anyway. They can't capture the speed of the real thing since you need pretty long exposure time to get enough light.

I was in the area too. Decided to go for a drive to Southport beach to try and catch it and saw.. nothing.

Yesterday evening I tried Crosby beach. Also nothing.

Did I just go at the wrong time? It was between 11pm and 1am.

Which app have you been using for the aurora warning?

Not who you were replying to, but I've had the AuroraWatch UK app installed for a while now (and yes, we enjoyed last night's display, after being alerted by the app).

Hello from the Wirral!

Someone shared something similar on Twitter: https://x.com/packyM/status/1789113052723314918

Wow that's magnificent.

Can somebody link not to Twitter, please?

I’m a few thousand kilometres south of you in Portugal - here, we got the side view of what was above you, and it was spectacular - pink sky underlit by blue and green filled with vast columns. It really gave me the sense of being a tiny thing on a virtually naked sphere hurtling through the void - seeing such titanic structures really puts things into scale.

Thank you for sharing that. I wonder at what speed the morphing happen, also a sense of proportion. Very hard to capture that in anything but direct experience.

Per Wikipedia, most auroras are 300 to 600 km wide, and occur at 90 to 150 km above surface. It' below LEO (300 km), but it's considered outer space already. You actually see a thing the size of a mountain range shining and morphing above you in space.

Thee scale is what the pictures don't capture. The color is stronger in the camera but at some point there was a red or pink streak across half the sky. From zenith and down 1/2 way on one side and 2/3 on the other side. As usual, it's hard for a camera to capture the feeling of being there and having it all above you.

The scale of change I saw yesterday is that it fades in or changes over five seconds maybe, it's not changing faster than that. The most intense lights were over some 20 minute period maybe and then slowly it was mostly disappearing again.

Not sure here in proper continental Europe, but the usual sightings in the Arctic Circle are typically very short. Like it shows up for a minute or even not so. Then you wait an hour and another sighting for tens of seconds. Obviously sometimes it lasts for hours, but this is nothing frequent (in given location).

Can you share a photo?

Currently pretty good at the South Pole. The pink skies are wild. Green auroras are fairlty common over the winter, but it's unusual for it to be this red.

If you're interested in a real time video, here's one I captured a few weeks ago from our "back yard" (excuse the Instagram link)

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6T27pEO7dQ/?igsh=eXJyOGtuY2l...

I took one semi successful photo using my crappy beat-down a20e Samsung phone.

It doesn't do what we saw justice at all.

https://imgur.com/5mlD22W

Poetry comes to us when we can’t say exactly how it made us feel. As a son of Jurgen, I appreciated your account.

Here are some phone pics from my home village in Germany: https://www.nowhereinparticular.xyz/polarlichter.html

This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. My brother, who is a hobby astronomer, called me and sent me outside. Initially, I saw only a faint red glow in the northeast of the sky, but after a few minutes, my eyes adapted and I could see how it slowly moved and changed its form over time. I stayed outside for maybe 15 minutes and then went back inside. An hour later, I went outside again and almost the whole sky was shining in all different colors and forms, from patches to clouds to pillars that seemed to support the heavens, ever chaning. Incredible.

In southern Netherlands at the coast, with a 10 sec exposure, iPhone 12 mini, main cam, I was able to see some pink and green with streaks. To my eyes it was like faint clouds that changed to quickly to be clouds, better visible when I didn’t look straight at them. Your pics are something else, but what was it like to your eyes?

In the east of the Netherlands I was seeing something similar to what you describe, but when particularly active I also saw a reddish glow in places. This is a timelapse I made around the same time: https://imgur.com/a/kloWEOl

From Bournemouth in the UK, I got the same impression as you - looking like cloud sheets, but more straight lines than, say, what windblown contrails look like. No clear color visible to me but the location wasn't anywhere near "dark".

I've seen impressive (and colorful) aurora before, and can well imagine it might've looked splendid in (darker) places. Don't give up ... maybe more on the way.

The colors in my pics are a bit more intense than they were to the eyes, but not by that much. They were all clearly visible, including all the structures, glowing. It is pretty dark where I come from, the next city is dozens of kilometers away.

Is your village north, middle or south Germany. Just curious how much I missed:-/

Mid-west, in an area called Hunsrück.

Thank you for not linking to Twitter.

Wow! Check out the view from the Jungfraujoch in Switzerland! https://www.jungfrau.ch/en-gb/live/webcams/#webcam-jungfrauj...

Doesn’t look like that in reality. If I take a photo on my phone here in the UK midlands I get pink and green in all directions with a 3 second exposure.

However with just the naked eye it’s like super high level clouds

Ok why is it that some people say northern lights look EXACTLY like these spectacular photos, and others say in real life they are actually barely visible and you need a camera and very dark skies?

Is there some kind of running joke I’m missing? I saw some northern lights in Iceland but they were very dim and underwhelming, I didn’t even know what I was looking at until I photographed them and saw the vivid green streaks in the photo, which definitely weren’t super visible in real life. The tour guide even said they aren’t actually like the photos at all!

Are northern lights bullshit or what? What is possible to see with just a bare naked eye?

Yeah, camera sensors (depending on filtering) are far more sensitive to the dim light of the aurora than our eyes. Still means you can get utterly amazing photography there already! :)

Yeah, none of these other stories and photos are from reality

Any place with that much snow in mid-May is just make believe to me at this point in time.

what am I expecting to see?

These are live webcams. At the time it was sent it was probably showing the aurora

For those coming here during the day, they have a page with the best images of tonight: https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/bestof/

Here’s a time archive of all the cams https://www.foto-webcam.eu/2024/05/10/2230

I just came home, went up the mountains. Absolutely crazy what I was able to see. I live somewhere mid to north Germany. Super stoked to go further up north based on what I saw in the sky. I have to say the images don't even nearly do justice to what I saw tonight, it was absolutely amazing. I spent some 6 hours up there. Just poor phone images, sorry.

https://imgur.com/a/lPI9EXc

from sheer curiosity, I had to try to see what was in that image. just a meager push of the exposure revealed some color on top of the horrid compression:

https://imgur.com/a/D7MGjoS

If you want the best possible view with the naked eye, give them a chance to adapt to the dark properly. The human eye is about 100,000 more sensitive after an hour in total darkness. A smartphone screen or car headlight is enough to undo it.

Use the old pirate trick and keep an eye patch over one of the eyes, and switch when going outside. They used it to be able to see inside the boat going from bright sunlight.

Wait no way? That’s where the pirate eye patch trope comes from? There was a practical reason?

This is genius.

Makes sense.. all the serious astronomy apps are in black and red, and back before we had phones, we used to use red flashlights if we needed to consult our charts.

just like all of the 80s military action films with red filtered flashlights or CNC rooms on ships. sometimes, meme like content isn't just made up. as an amateur (at best) astro type person, you learn very quickly how true how quickly a brief flash of white light can ruin your night vision. walking around during the day without sun glasses can also extend the amount of time it takes your eyes to acclimate to the dark. however, once you do allow your eyes to acclimate to the dark, it is amazing to me still how much we can actually see.

Yup. Here in the city of Seattle, I went to a park where there were lots of people and unfortunately, lots of light. I could see some wispy light in the sky, and it was interesting to look at but not very dynamic.

After I got home, I just laid down in the grass in the back yard where it's fairly dark. After about 15 minutes, I had a pretty good view of what looked a bit like streaky clouds throughout the sky. It was still somewhat faint but the movement was fantastic to watch.

car headlights are brighter than the sun from a short enough distance; perhaps you think we can guess what distance you're talking about seeing the car headline from, but actually you have to be explicit about it

In the dark notice how much light comes from a phone and how much that illuminates the person holding the phone.

A car headlight shining your way from hundreds of meters even over 1km will often illuminate that person far more than their phone screen.

So if the phone screen is enough to undo the hour long eyes adjusting to the dark duration, then the car headlights at almost any realistic distance causes an undo.

The earth is the greatest spaceship we’ll ever know. Complete magic is this phenomenon.

Feels like one is engulfed in the Aurora when it’s strong. First time I experienced it the arctic circle actually scared me.

It's really damn beautiful, but it's scary. Whenever there are events on Earth that aren't typical of nature at regular times for some reason I always think it's not a good sign..

Don't worry, it's very typical. Just the timescales are literally astronomical.

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.

Agree. Was surprised how well the phone pulled the colour out.

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

I'm near Bristol. It's still absolutely stunning. It's not just to the north, either - it's everywhere.

Yep I noticed that to, it’s sort of bathing everywhere from zenith

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.

Similar for me down south too (Cambridge). My first sighting and it is superb.

Wow, I just went outside (South West of France) to plug the car for charging before going to bed.

I noticed unusual, faint light patterns in the night sky, like long spikes coming from the North. It was not the Milky Way, we can see every clear night. Color was mostly gray slightly pink. Wondered what was that ... My first aurora !!!

> It was not the Milky Way, we can see every clear night.

I'm exceedingly jealous. I don't think I've ever lived somewhere that I could see it, no matter how clear the night. Looking at images of "north america at night" vs "europe at night" I can see why.

In most locations around the world , I think you are a 3 hour drive from a camping trip with milky way nightime exposure.

Try it out! Enlist some of your hiking friends. They'll tell you where to go.

With the milky way it's the same thing as the auroras. I went camping in the middle of nowhere USA, and on a clear night you can absolutely not see the milkyway the way it's portrayed in photos. It looks waaaaaaaaay less clear. You need a very long exposure camera to see it the same way as on the internet. The only difference with Europe is that I saw more stars, but none of those nebulas.

Go take some photos with your camera -- it will pick up brilliant colours from what looks like super dim/grey "clouds/glow" to our eyes :)

The NOAA forecast suggests it'll be nearly as powerful as the March 13th storm in '89 that took out the Quebec grid: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/aurora-dashboard-exper...

Most of Europe == Not covered by light polution. (and specific areas)

(it's orange outside and it's sodium vapor related)

edit: kind of whish I was at my parent's place. It's a lot less poluted but no go here; nw europe densly populated, we also have the artificial sunrise here 24/7 by means of greenhouses.

> we also have the artificial sunrise here 24/7 by means of greenhouses.

That's a Dutch thing. You can choose between being a great exporter of unripe, tasteless tomatoes, or seeing Aurora Borealis, but you can't have both..

This is what I could see with my camera in the east of the Netherlands, and even with the naked eye I could easily see some red at times: https://imgur.com/a/kloWEOl

> a great exporter of unripe, tasteless tomatoes

The small ones are okay-ish (cherry tomatoes) if that makes you happier

It’s just about visible (much more so through an iPhone camera) in central London right now

That's pretty incredible. Central London is so bright at night that very few stars are even visible usually.

Classic aurora move, I can almost hear the charged particles now...

"Und doch habe ich allein, allein auf mich gestellt, ganz Europa erobert!"

Sure you did charged particles, sure you did, but welcome to Europe's secret weapon: Light pollution!

> Sure you did charged particles

Well technically ... sodium vapor lamps are charged particles. But yea you are correct we're screwed.

I was in middle of nowhere Sweden last week but the number of daylight hours are so high that far north that even in the dead middle of the night the sky is still blue

I could see faint streaks from central Berlin. No doubt it’d look better from a deep darkness but even in the city it can be seen tonight.

Even in the light polluted London you can still see it, even if it's faint.

From the ground I cannot see it (I'm a bit north of london latitude wise so it should be better), and we have nicely combination of areas of greenhouses and petrochemical companies burning off here so it might be far worse than central london unfortunately. I'm not too high up but my view north is quite ok ... and unnatural orangeish and void of any pink.

Well, I was watching it in East London last night

This also appears to be happening in the southern hemisphere as well and growing brighter. My layman understanding is auroras are the result of coronal mass ejections interacting with Earth's atmosphere, but I don't recall these incidents being large enough to be so visible in the northern and southern hemispheres simultaneously.

This is the biggest storm since 2003! We hit a G5 on the SWPC geomagnetic storm reading, and my team had to power down components on our satellites to keep them safe!

Now that’s a badass sentence. What is your team working on?

While I was happily posting photos of the ionic chaos over your network throughout. Nice one.

Carrington comes to mind…

That had aurora visible in Florida and Hawaii. It's going to take a little more effort from the Sun to match that.

I'm in the southern hemisphere (near Antarctica) and the sight is absolutely insane, almost terrifying... its a bright red aurora. Never seen anything like it.

Even in Uruguay it can be seen... Incredible.

people live near antartica?

Ushaiha and the Falklands?

please post a photo!

I was out last night, but here you go: https://ibb.co/68hPjRT

This shows a scientific view of it:

https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/space/surface/level/an...

It was seen in France and Switzerland today, even if they are not colored in on the map, so it could be seen outside the main areas.

Also - there is green over the equator - is that intentional?

Does it shift around? It's quite absent in the western US and Canada right now:

https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/space/surface/level/an...

Of course, it's still a beautiful sunny warm day too where I am so it'll be 5 hours or so before it's dark enough to see it.

The auroral oval stays roughly the same but the Earth rotates under it.

There is a 50% probability of aurora borealis over the equator right now according to that website.

That's a really cool website. Very responsive too.

I live in a northern Atlantic country and use it to learn about upcoming storms during storm season, days in advance of my national weather service.

Is it visible from Australia as well?

This is a very cool visulization

Many of the photos here show it in such vivid colour, but for me the really breathtaking part was the scale and movement of the aurora.

Last night (here in Quebec) the entire sky was filled with colour. It's not as intense in person, but the slow shimmer of it is otherworldly. I was up on my roof for almost an hour, watching the blobs undulate in the sky. I think it made a bigger impression on me than the recent eclipse.

I am sad that I missed it. I there some sort of forecast service that tells when there is a good chance to see an aurora in a particular place?

If you go to https://spaceweather.com they have a link for text alerts when these things are about to happen.

That is one way.

I visit that site and a similar site for CME and space weather information: https://www.spaceweatherlive.com

There is a lot to see and to follow. I just came back inside after snapping pics since just after dark here in N Texas. We had a good show that started off behind the clouds but it was bright enough to shine through the clouds. Then a few hours later after the clouds cleared it was great. My camera battery quit on me. I used three cameras tonight and only really got usable photos from my iphone, whose camera I normally hate because it always seems to process images after I take them. Part of it is probably on me since I haven't taken the time to study how to optimize settings.

Anyway. Tomorrow should be another good day for this. Keep your eyes on the sky!

I'd also recommend checking a website like https://www.lightpollutionmap.info to find an area nearby that has less light pollution.

Yes, you can use the NOAA forecast site which will show the "oval" and has 24 hour/30min predictions. Or Space Weather Live has some location forecasts. Generally if you don't live at a high latitude you need a very strong display to see anything. There's usually a bit of warning for storms like this, as various solar observation satellites can beam back images of the CME faster than the solar wind takes to get here.

The keywords to use are “space weather forecast <country>”

https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/

I also missed it. Meant to be happening again tonight though.

Tonight at which location? Europe? I might go for a impromptu camping trip!

i have the unique experience of being in a plane over the Bering sea a few hours ago. https://twitter.com/JeremyRubin/status/1789273537179426922

i was going nuts in my seat and seemed to be the only one on the plane aware of what was going on.

Ive had a similar experience but looking at massive forest fires outside and noone in the cabin caring in the least bit. Its a strange thing.

I’ve got a flight tonight at 23:00 so hopefully can secure a window seat!

Any chance it'll be there tomorrow too?

Seems beautiful in the French alps, wonder if it's worth trying to go there tomorrow

https://www.skaping.com/chamrousse/la-croix?archives=MTcxNTM...

There were some follow on flare events. "Additional activity expected"

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/g5-conditions-observed today

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/homepage in the future

Yep X5.8 registered about an hour ago.

Went about an hour north of Vancouver BC Canada to get away from bit city lights and watch.

It was probably not the brightest small strands I've ever seen - if my memories of Northern Saskatchewan as a kid are still accurate - but I don't think I've seen the whole sky light up to such an extent.

here's a photo: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fu...

magenta and green colours were clearly visible in person during the intense periods, although obviously not as bright or intense as long exposure photos. Solidly visible bands for at least the two hours I stayed out.

First time I've ever seen the aurora from West London - I always assumed the light polution would make it impossible to see, but here's a picture I took of it over the Thames: https://twitter.com/MarkJHandley/status/1789070802459000892

I saw a full aurora in Melbourne, Australia.

Colours, ribbons, arcs and beams all visible to the naked eye and on camera.

Normally with aurouras, you only get to see a faint greyish glow on the horizon and it only looks good on camera. Not this time.

Aurora australis are dimmer than aurora borealis.

Source? I believe it depends on what part of the magnetic field the CME hits. There are more people living closer to the north pole which might give that impression initially.

Here in Australia I leaned pretty quickly from other local Aurora chasers not to rely on Kp, which is relevant to North America only. Instead I use the global storm strength and the Hobart magnometer readings.

Well visible in central Switzerland: https://feed.yellow.camera/rigi-scheidegg https://feed.yellow.camera/rigi-rotstock

Just amazing... I've only ever seen these kinds of photos at the north pole before.

Crazy, even Bern is bathed in Northern Lights