Aurora in Portland, Oregon

w7ay

Very strong Aurora in Portland, Oregon:

North is towards the left edge (Polaris is in that clump of trees most of the time). The Meridian pretty much divides the image into two halves. The trees? -- hey, this is Oregon (just had an arborist come by last week to trim some of the overgrown branches :-).

This is captured with my All-Sky Camera -- non-cooled ASI294MC, with a Samyang 8mm Sony FE fisheye lens, using a ZWO Sony adapter.

Raspberry Pi 4 running INDIGO Sky and my own capture program on MacOS X. Box runs off Ethernet PoE -- a single cable.

Color is white balanced to daytime. Getting correct color for different sky brightness was one of the reasons I decided to write my own program. You can see the parameters for Night, Twilight and Day in theat setup window (second image). And interpolated for other sky brightness -- actually based on an Apple patent I was involved over 20 years ago, and forms the basis of some of the color stuff including the "night shift" function in iOS today. Notics that the sky towards the south is blue :-).

I have never seen aurora in Portland -- in fact I have never seen aurora in my life. Imagine my shock to see how strong the aurora is!

Chen

w7ay

Stronger now (midnight local time).

Chen

w7ay

The light show gets better...

By the way...

1) I am in Bortle 5-6, and I can hardly see any aurora with my unaided eyes. North-east is a little pinkish and thats it, no structure.

2) Ditto a 50mm lens on an ASI6200. Nothing much showing. You really need wiiidddeee FOV.

Anyway, makes me feel better "wasting time," writing my own All-Sky program (and spending the money on an ASI294MC and Samyang 8mm Fisheye).

https://www.amazon.com/Samyang-Fisheye-Mount-Cameras-SY8MBK28/dp/B00JD4T9II

The (plastic) petal lens hood was glued on, so I nibbled it away using a pair of diagonal cutters :-).

I had an earlier All-Sky camera, using C-mount lenses (better than the stuff ZWO sells), ASI183MC and ASIAIR. I am glad I went to a real fisheye lens and INDIGO Sky. No way ASIAIR or a smaller sensor could give these results.

Chen

johnpd

I was able to pick it up down here just south of Tucson AZ. Not quite as spectacular as your view but amazing non the less. Could not really see it visually, but 30s images got it great.

JohnD

wvreeven

We had a nice show near Madrid, Spain, as well. I've seen it several times from the Netherlands in the past. Never thought I'd see auroras this far south.

w7ay

wvreeven Never thought I'd see auroras this far south.

Wouter, one of my sisters told me she saw it in the San Francisco area (latitude 38º), and her daughter managed to get some pictures on an iPhone even. Another sister, who also lives in the Bay Area, went with her husband to a park, but didn't see anything.

In my case, it came and went between 11pm and 1:10 am local time. And then reappeared at 1:50am for perhaps just half an hour. If you didn't look in those windows, you'd have missed it. In between, this is what I saw (inverted Big Dipper) :-)

It was quite spectacular when it came back:

The K-sub-P (planetary K) index went up to 9 (max number), then fell back to a little over 8, but now back up to 9 again. Europe may get another spectacular display this evening. I am hoping that the solar storm lasts long enough for us to see it again tonight (greedy pig :-).

This one is for the record books!

Chen