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Comment by sebastianconcpt | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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).

I am looking at the foto webcam images too and haven't seen the aurora myself, but the photos show a much longer timespan: For Wildhaus the first image with a pink/greenish glow is at 22:22

https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/wildhaus/2024/05/10/2220

and this continues through the entire night https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/wildhaus/2024/05/10/2230

till shortly before sunset, where the exposure time probably shortens too much to capture the color of the the aurora https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/wildhaus/2024/05/11/0420

Other locations:

https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/ewa/2024/05/11/0330

https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/glecksteinhuette/2024/05/1...

https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/hochleckenhaus/2024/05/11/...

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