Aurora Watch this Weekend
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Events like May and October 2024 last year you can see easily with the naked eye from most places once you're not in a large urban area. They're very rare though and are the exception.
Most aurora events in Ireland are not overhead. Of course the further north you are, the better it'll be typically - with the exception of late spring to late summer when the south gets darker quicker or holds onto night time for longer whereas the north of the country goes into permanent twilight earlier. The darker it is, the easier it is to see the display. Minimal artificial light pollution, a small or no moon, a cloudless sky and an unobstructed northern horizon. A bright moon makes it much more difficult, especially for naked eye viewing.
Take time to adjust your eyes to the night sky for the best experience. This means no sources of light whatsoever including your phone screen. Many don't take the time to do so and say ah sure it can only be seen via a camera. Yeah the human iris will never have the light gathering capabilities that a camera can. We can't do long exposure times with our eyes. Alternatively there's things the camera can't do which the human eye is better at such as dynamic range (the contrast between the brightest and darkest highlights/shadows in the scene).
I've seen plenty of naked eye auroras that weren't the massive events named above and I live in Dublin, the worst light polluted place in the country. In fact, the image below was my first naked eye aurora from Balbriggan, Dublin in September 2023. I could see these pillars or beams of light clearly with the naked eye. This was only a G1 event (a kp5 although there were periods of kp6) which happens a good bit of times - for comparison May 2024 was a G5 (the strongest since 1989) and October 2024 was a G4. At first it was just a bit of green on the northern horizon which I waited patiently for an outburst to occur and the sky exploded.
Auroras follow a pattern, you have the growth which can take a while. The auroral oval (the green) rises and rises higher in the sky getting brighter then the sky explodes into colour with bright pillars beaming up. Then it dies down and enters the recovery phase before growth slowly occurs again restarting the cycle. You need to have great bags of patience, especially if it's not a huge event. Although even with a big event (such as 5th November 2023), you can be left waiting a while when I waited with friends out for 2 hours for an outburst to occur.
Photography site - https://sryanbruenphoto.com/
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