Aurora Watch this Weekend

Probably because I just took an automatic setting picture and have no clue of how to adjust settings - but what I saw with the naked eye was slightly better than what is on my phone.

what was kp last night?

I see CNN and the likes trying in vain to make an end is nigh-ish type story out of this. Quebec in the 80s coming up a few times and probing questions with science boffins about what could happen like blackouts, failed comms, failing satellites etc. No one really biting though except Bill Nye who said this has him real concerned .. up there on his end of days list type thing.

I think many leasons were learned around solar storms / cme's since the 80s and more recently. Power systems etc have been well hardened to sustain events like this now. Satellites also, I think they turn some off and shielded better?

I'm only shocked they're not linking it to climate change.....

Disaster sells.

BBC were sort of at it also.

Its called catastrophizing .. we live in a world now where anxiety is turned on all the time by default with smart phones chained to us 24/7..

Dont think anyone could link it too climate change or even try .. its space weather, complete different thing. I suppose where it may react is only where the charged particles due to the strength of these current cme's are making there way deeper into ore atmosphere and interacting with alot more things like oxygen etc hence the different colours, I think red is the higher interactions, purple lower.

Also an fyi is this event differs as its not one big cme making it 5+ … its in fact ( apparently ) a whole lot of cme's fired off from a sunspot about width of 7 planet earths .. one after the other and arriving in numbers. Thats what is making this unique-er :D

Here you go @Elmer Blooker

Who said this? Sounds like giant BS to me.

Well, I for one stayed up all night watching this "problem" and hope to have the privilege to see it again in my lifetime.

Oddly enough we had an earth trip go at around 4pm yesterday afternoon. It was before it all kicked off, but now everyone is saying thats too much of a coincidence. Its one of the old style EXTREMELY sensitive ones, and I guess an auroral current could have induced enough of a current to clip it out. But I doubt it. I'll tell people thats what happened though because it makes for a nice story.

Would it have been related to the solar flares I wonder

I’m in an elevated area of rathfarnham and I was keeping an eye out last night but didn’t see anything!
Am I too close to the city to see the light show?
I was looking North towards the city but possibly I should’ve been looking to the south west?
Will we get another light show tonight?

…use your phone to find the lights, cam sensors are far more sensitive than the eye, pictures shown arent what people actually see…..

I saw better than what my pictures show. I thought like you did until I saw it in person last night.

hit and miss in iceland, i know people that have gone, and seen zip, i know people that took a couple of trips to iceland to see them, they were rewarded on their last trip, but that was their second attempt i think. this is common enough with extremely difficult to predict events, but we now live in a world of extremely high expectations, i havent seen the lights at all in iceland, but ive been going in the summer, and its not my highest priority…..

Where can I go later with the kids in North Dublin? Do we need truly dark skies?

Great tips cnocbui! Could have used them last night on Bray Beach. Thankfully my brother and his Fiancee got some decent shots. Will try again tonight. Didn't even know where to find the settings on my Samsung Phone. LOL. Found them now though so all set. Finally I get to put the Z Flip 5 folding mechanism and my Smartwatch to really interesting use other than the usual. ie. The bottom half of the phone can be its own stand on any flat surface and I can tilt the top half with the cameras on one side and the top half of the screen on the other at any angle from Horizon to Zenith. I think I can also use my Galaxy Smart watch to preview the shot even if the preview screen on the phone is tilted so far back it can't be seen easily and can trigger the shot without even having to touch and vibrate the phone. Have to google that functionality. [EDIT] Just checked and it works perfectly!!

Yep. I can confirm this. We walked down the road to Bray beach at 10:40pm and down behind the bank of stones to get out of the direct rays from the Promenade lights. Straight away you could see a large patch of milky 'mist' over the sea which the uninformed would assume was just that. Mist glowing from moonlight or something. Couldn't see a thing on the bank of stones and could have been sitting on Dog **** for all we knew. However, by about 11pm we were fully dark adapted and now could see every little pebble under us easily and the Milky Mist was quite a bit brighter and we could now see vertical striations in it. Was about to call it a night, happy to be able to say we finally saw an Aurora. Happy that real Aurora photons hit our retina's, but our suspicions confirmed that its great to see but a bit underwhelming and the real WOW must only come from Cameras and Photo's. Couldn't have been more wrong. At 11:05pm we started to see a faint pink patch in the milky mist and at first thought it was our eyes playing tricks on us. Then **** got wild very quickly as the Aurora rapidly intensified. Naked eye was it like the intense coloured photo's people are posting? No. However it was as good or better naked eye than some of the dimmer photo's some people are posting. The milky white areas were replaced with admittedly dim green but Holy **** the Pinks and Reds and Vermillions were plain as day and surprisingly bright to the naked eye. Followed the massive Rays of pink, red and vermillion towards zenith overhead and only then realised that Rays then spread out from the zenith in the other direction all the way to the Western Horizon too!! Hadn't looked behind us towards the promenade lights before then because we didn't want to risk blowing our eyes dark adaptation.

Yes @cnocbui I have an s20 with Android v13 and in pro mode one selects SPEED as per image below ( goes up as far as 30 and down as far as 1/12000 ).

However you would have to have a tripod for any longish exposure, by hand there would be too much camera shake.

Instead I use my manfroto tripod with my trusty mirrorless ( old ) Fujifilm X-E1

Gonna give this pair a try tonight for long exposure shots. Kicking myself I didn't think of this before heading out last night nor think to google proper camera settings for Aurora for my phone. Hopefully the weather and the Coronal Mass Ejections play ball again tonight so I can put my phone and watch to the test.