BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Silent Storms - magnificent aurora video

Coming up to the summer solstice, it isn't the time of year for seeing aurorae (northern lights) in arctic Scandinavia. But I have noticed that observers in southern Canada and the northern US states still have skies dark enough to photograph the recent aurorae.

For the rest of us, here is a new video by Norwegian photographer Ole C. Salomonsen, called Silent Storms. The silent storms are the geomagnetic storms that bring about auroral activity.

You can find out more about aurorae in my article Aurorae - Polar Light Shows.

This video of the northern lights. was taken in Yellowknife, Canada. Most videos we see of the aurora are time lapse videos, and they tend to show the auroral display at an unnaturally high speed. It makes some sense, especially when the changes are slow, otherwise the video would go on and on without much happening.

However a strong aurora will change rapidly, and it's quite difficult to video. The movement can be faster than the camera can manage. This video is unusual in being taken in real time, and the result is magnificent. It's an incredible experience to see a display like this one with the aurora seeming to dance in the sky.

This is a short timelapse video made in 2011 from a sequence of shots of the aurora australis taken from the International Space Station in September 2011. The ISS is going from south of Madagascar over the Indian Ocean to just north of Australia. Although aurorae are high in the atmosphere, the space station usually flies over them.

The aurora australis is the southern counterpart to the northern aurora borealis. Earth has two geomagnetic poles, and there are aurorae near both of them.