Recent Aurora Images from Tasmania

[astrojase]

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!!!

I've mostly been doing time lapse with stills from my DSLR - you can check them out on my YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9jUIWcC0ZeLXx4gXBXKIYg

[h0ughy]

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?

[gregbradley]

Fabulous shots. So jealous.

Greg.

[Derek Klepp]

Brilliant

[multiweb]

Sublime. I particularly like the one with the bright white line. :thumbsup:

[rcheshire]

Stunning...

[astrojase]

Thank you for the kind words.

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!!!

[Retrograde]

Beautiful images. Well done.

[GOTO]

Wow, I am very jealous and love your animation.
Cheers
Geoff

[MortonH]

Just beautiful.

[Saturn%5]

Very nice indeed, As always missed it :mad2:

[JA]

Beautiful ! Incredible colours in the video esp. !!!

Best
JA

[gregbradley]

Whereabouts is this?

Greg.

[Regulus]

Nicely caught, and nicely processed.
Are these looking down the Tamar? Or Derwent?
I'm thinking Tamar, but happy to be corrected :-)
Trevor

[astrojase]

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!

[gregbradley]

Fantastic.

Greg.

[astrojase]

Cheers Greg.

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!

[batema]

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 .

Mark.

[batema]

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.

Thanks Mark.

[gregbradley]

Holy Cow, that's a ripper. You were in the right spot at the right time!

Greg.

[astrojase]

Geographic latitude - Norway is 60 so the aurora appear more overhead than here at 43, so we are more or less looking at the aurora 'side on'...in a nutshell.

The camera/lens combo I'm using at the moment is Nikon D5600 with a Tamron 15 to 30 f/2.8 mostly at 15mm and f/2.8.

Try and keep ISO down, mostly around 1000 to 1600 but for faint aurora you'll need 3200 and exposures range from 10 to 30 seconds, again depending on how bright she is.

Lens you want as wide as possible, so if you've only got a kit lens, say 18 -55mm then shoot at 18mm and always have your aperture wide open, so lowest f/ available. You are collecting light so wide open long exposure works best.

Hard and fast rules only YMMV :-)

[batema]

Thankyou

[astrojase]

Another large coronal hole released a high speed Earth facing stream of solar wind which impacted Friday just gone (1st of June 2018) which resulted in some minor geomagnetic activity.

I was lucky enough to capture some more images from my favourite spot just South of here in Tasmania.

This image was created stacking 10 x 30 second images I took, in sequence, from 7:50pm to 7:55pm - the Moon had just risen over North Bruny Island (to the right) as a series of Auroral Beams started to dance across the sky from SSE to SSW.

Whilst the Moon light does wash the display out slightly, it was still well and truly visible even to the naked eye.

[gregbradley]

Lovely!

Greg.

[Ryderscope]

Beautiful aurora shots. Stunning.

[Premordial]

Very nice shot...

[astrojase]

Well, it's been a while! Solar Minimum will do that LOL - seems like we are definitely starting the new solar cycle with a bit of a bang! Captured this image Saturday night just gone, Aurora Australis kicked off as a result of a CHHS and CME, Kp got to around 6 so it was technically classified as a G2 storm. Was naked eye from just after sunset right through to when thick cloud spoilt my night just before midnight.

She was soooo bright this only needed 10 seconds at ISO1250 (f/2.8 lens).

[gregbradley]

A wonderful image. Where was this taken?

Greg.

[Sunfish]

Excellent image and a beautiful Aurora. Must be a lot of sun activity right now.

[peter_4059]

Are they taken in the channel area?

[astrojase]

Hey Guys many thanks!

Spot on, image captured from the Tinderbox boat ramp, Southern Tasmania - looking straight down the channel ;-)

I took over 700 images that night, started around 20:00 and got clouded out just before midnight :-(

Timelapse here: https://youtu.be/3xKnRG7UBPw

Sun has been active lately, large Coronal Hole and 2 CME's!!!

[graham.hobart]

that is great mate- Tinderbox is my fave dive site- we were there Saturday morning at the tyre reef!
I have seen this on you tube and can i share this with my buddies? it is spectacular!!
great capture, makes me feel sad for being so lazy on Saturday!!

[JA]

Well done Jason. Great Videos and Pics:thumbsup:

Best
JA

[astronobob]

Spectacular scenes and probably the best Aurora captures Ive seen taken from Taz.
Well Done on both pics and video Jason :cool2:

[astrojase]

*blush* thanks for the kind words! In fairness, there are a lot of super talented photographers down this way - these shots are 'ok' compared

More to come, I find myself 'reprocessing' a lot lately...

Graham, share away! I tried the snorkel trail down there a while ago, very nice!

[N1]

Great thread! The moonbow pic is one of the best Aurora photos I have ever seen, an absurdly spectacular capture. Forget about talent that others may or may not have, it doesn't matter when things just come together like in that photo. Also nice to see activity picking up, saw the recent one myself, from central South Island

[AstroJunk]

Awesome! Pop by any time you like ;) :thumbsup:

[astrojase]

Another CME arrived at Earth on Friday May the 13th - it was stunning to watch! One of the strongest I've seen. I have also never seen the sky as red as it was in my images afterwards, I actually thought I'd messed up my settings, but it was there! They call it SAR or Stable Aurora Red - it was so extensive even my ultra wide at 15mm (110 degree FOV) couldn't fit it all in...

Got a bit artistic with this image, cropped in (which I don't like doing, defeats the purpose of an ultra wide!) but it came out nice enough.

This was 30 second exposure at ISO3200 wide open at f/2.8 using a Nikon D750 and through a Tamron 15-30mm lense.

I was on my way down to my favourite viewing spot to set up but lady Aurora started dancing though my windscreen! So I pulled over on the side of the road and started shooting, this shot was taken about 5 minutes away from Tinderbox boat ramp in Southern Tasmania.

From all reports, she was naked eye and clearly visible from Victoria maybe even parts of NSW!!!

[astrojase]

Thought I should add an image from the same night and location, this one about 30 minutes after the first one - no processing, and no crop! I am not kidding, this event was stunning!

[N1]

A great record of the recent event. It was bright alright

[N1]

Just returned home from summer holidays in Victoria, and before that, Tassie. Great trip despite no auroras.

Bumping this thread because of Post #17 (https://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showpost.php?p=1360763&postcount=17) and because, well, Tasmania.

[Leo.G]

Stunning images, every one of them!