Earth is currently experiencing some of the strongest geomagnetic storms for over 20 years, with the northern and southern lights visible at latitudes that rarely see any aurora.
Aurora have been seen as far south as Arizona and Florida, and southern Europe. The very rare displays look set to continue throughout the weekend with sustained activity expected. An X-class solar flare on the sun on Friday could mean they continue into Sunday and beyond.
However, don’t expect the aurora to be brilliantly bright in your backyard tonight, tomorrow night or any other night. Or be in a position to take incredible images with your smartphone without trying. Both may be possible, depending on your location, but here’s what you should do to maximize your chances:
1. Find Our When The Sun Sets
Auroral activity might be incredibly high at any time of the day, but unless it’s very dark you’ll see nothing. Finding out the time of sunset where you are is easy enough, but you also need to know that at this time of year in the northern hemisphere, twilight lasts for an hour or more. Don’t count on seeing much before astronomical darkness roughly 90 minutes after sunset.
2. Check The Cloud Cover
If it’s cloudy, you’ll see nothing. But there are different types of clouds. Low cloud is the only one you need to be really worried about. If you have 90% low cloud, it’s probably game over. However, if you have no low cloud—whether or not you have high cloud—it could be game on. High cloud is cirrus, which is typically thin and wispy, and doesn’t much affect the view of aurora. Check you location on Clear Outside, the Scope Nights app or Windy—or any app or website with figures for low, medium and high cloud. Be wary of apps that just give you a percentage figure for cloud cover, which could cause you to call-off a chase unnecessarily. Of course the best way to check actual cloud cover is your Mk1 Eyeballs—just go outside and use your own eyes.
3. Check The Likelihood Of Aurora
There are several ways of checking whether aurora is likely where you live. Apps that will give you alerts customized to your location include My Aurora Forecast & Alerts and AuroraWatchUK. It’s also worth checking the Aurora – 30 Minute Forecast – Space Weather Prediction Center.
4. Get Out Of The City
Most people live in places that are aurora-proof. That blanket of light pollution across cities, caused by thousands of lights (most of which don’t need to be on at night), make it very difficult to see anything other than tenuous, color-less detail even in strong aurora. You might get lucky with particularly bright displays, but the best advice you’ll ever get about seeing the aurora is to get out of the city to dark country skies. Drive about 20 miles away from a city, use a Dark Sky Place finder or check the light pollution map. In the U.K. there’s a network of Dark Sky Discovery Sites.
5. Take A Tripod And Shoot In Raw
Yes, you can take images of aurora with your smartphone. Simply by using “night mode” or a long exposure will get you a good shot. Long exposures are how photographers get the wow-factor color into their aurora shots—which can look distinctly grey to the naked eye. Some support will vastly improve your shots. You can rest your phone on something—perhaps a fence, a wall or anything else stationary—but the best way to get great-looking long exposures is to use a tripod and a universal smartphone mount. Either way, shoot in raw quality if you can—you’ll then be able to make the images look awesome by editing them afterwards.
Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
