It's been a long time since I posted something on here!
I've shifted down south and rediscovered the joy of the night sky - down here in Tasmania especially Aurora Australis...
For years I thought it was something only viewable from A LOT further south, but as it turns out, we get a fantastic view of it from here!
These two images are from the 28th of May this year, a magnificent G3 storm and from more recently the 23rd of August. Both events were visible to the naked eye. Really spectacular!!!
how cool are those e shots - fantastic and with a huge sunspot group coming around now I suspect you will get more viewing this week. but then the full moon is due too?
Last night was incredible too - despite a ~70% illuminated moon there was a spectacular naked-eye show on.
I started taking images as the sun was setting and the aurora oval became clear even on dusk. As the sun completely set, there were naked-eye beams and the auroral oval stretched right up at least 45 degrees above the southern horizon at times.
Here is another image, taken from 9:59pm last night, again even with the moonlight you can clearly see beams (two side-by-side). This image is not processed (apart from converting from raw to jpeg).
Compared to the other images it is clear that the moon does wash out the reds and blues but hey - it was still spectacular!!!
Sorry for the very late reply! (I'm an infrequent visitor/lurker)
Firstly I sincerely appreciate the kind comments!
They were all captured from the edge of a boat ramp located at Tinderbox Marine Reserve, south of Hobart. The view is looking due south straight down the D'Entrecasteaux Channel which separates the main 'island' of Tasmania from Bruny Island, so the land you can see to the left of the image is North Bruny Island and to right is looking towards a town called Margate.
I also wanted to add another shot (I do take thousands so it can take some time before I get around to processing them).
This one was from early December 2017 same location - was a bit cloudy and the Aurora was barely visible to the naked eye that night but I did manage to capture some lovely colours and some faint beams. Alas, she's been very elusive lately!
Thought I should add one more, the entire southern sky just exploded and there was a full Moon, wind, rain... mother nature was throwing a fit!!! This image was taken whilst it was raining, we do get a lot of sun-showers down here the rain gets blown on to you from miles away with clear skies above.
I could actually see the Moon Rainbow with my naked eyes that night, I was doing a timelapse so managed to capture about 9 frames before it disappeared, this one was my favourite. Sometimes the Moon washes out the colours but on that night Lady Aurora was singing very loudly!
Just fantastic. I wonder if there is a difference between the northern hemisphere aurora that you see images taken from places like Norway or the images from Tassy or NZ. A lot cheaper to go to the latter .
Hello again Jase. Timelapses are just fantastic as well. I'm in Qld but have a friend who lives in Tassie and whose daughter has just got a decent DSLR for school subject. Would you mind sharing the camera lens and iso, exposure settings and f stop so I can pass that on.
Thought I should add one more, the entire southern sky just exploded and there was a full Moon, wind, rain... mother nature was throwing a fit!!! This image was taken whilst it was raining, we do get a lot of sun-showers down here the rain gets blown on to you from miles away with clear skies above.
I could actually see the Moon Rainbow with my naked eyes that night, I was doing a timelapse so managed to capture about 9 frames before it disappeared, this one was my favourite. Sometimes the Moon washes out the colours but on that night Lady Aurora was singing very loudly!
Holy Cow, that's a ripper. You were in the right spot at the right time!