Panorama Photo

A typical aurora borealis display from Denmark. This would most likely have been visible from northern Germany as well. On this particular evening, I communicated with a friend in Jämtland, Sweden, at 63 degrees latitude, who told me that "it is all green here!". When viewing this live, it is important to stress, that it appears more or less colourless, like the lights from a big city. At most one can sense some green teint. The blue and magenta is however not possible to see - it is picked up by the camera on long exposure times. The brighter rays appear like actual sudden, brighter, rays that can glow clearly for severel seconds. These are the highlights of an borealis evening, and can even bright up the landscape.

If one wants to try ones luck on this subject, you must in advance have found a dark spot with a clear view to a northern horizon, that you can go to within a relative short space of time. Also make sure the moon is not up. Otherwise forget it! Then, you must check out some spaceweather. There are severel aurora forcast apps, but predictions are usually very uncertain. Although coronal mass ejections take some time to reach earth, it is quite unpredictable what side of the globe they splash into, and the intensity as well as direction. I therefore check the spaceweatherstation in Kiruna, Sweden, if the nightsky is clear and dark. Then I can see if something is brewing. In Denmark, the K-index needs to be at least 5-6. On this evening, it was 7. 8-9 will most likely be visible in Saxony. Check it here: http://www.irf.se/Observatory/?link[Magnetometers]=Data

As can be seen on aurora panos from Iceland, it is like moving bands overhead. This position is appr. 1000 km to the south, and aurora will appear as a glow in the northern horizon. The vertical field of view with this lens must be about 26 degrees on a full frame camera. In this mostly uncropped pano, aurora fills up more or less this vertical angle.

On my test site, #10164, you can see how little was left of it 30 minutes later

Pano made from 6 pics (RAW), 50 mm, Canon 6D, tripod, iso-5000, f/3,2, 1/13 sek, developed in DPP (3800K, neutral, low sharpness, periphal illumination 100), stitched in PTGui pro, contrast in Gimp, downscaling and sharpening in Irfanview.