Aurora Boeralis Pictures from New Mexico above Mountainair!

I got to take pictures of the Aurora Borealis for the first time this week!

I got up in the middle of the night while camping above Mountainaire, NM during the G4 geomagnetic storm on Thursday evening (the early, early morning of 24/10/11.) Left to my own devices, I couldn't see much of anything at first, but the cell phone camera did.

It took me a while to get used to how the Samsung S23+ camera worked vs the old Google Pixels I've got more experience with. The Samsung kept trying to save me time by putthing me in simple night mode. It did not save me time. Without being able to extend the shutter time I got kinda cool, but not the best pictures

(Note: I need to find a way to turn the page background block on selected posts like this one.)

A 1.5 second exposure came out like this

While a 5.5 second exposure resulted in

I had a heck of a time figuring out what had happened to the top of the tree ine middle of this picture

because, well, pine trees don't have tops like that. Then, it occurred to me that the camera was sitting on the ground, (on top of a rock), at this point. Cell phone cameras, mine at least, are pinhole cameras meaning they focus on everything and have very little perception of depth. The 'top' of that tree is actually the top of a stalk of brush between the camera and the tree!

This is probably my favorite for the evening

And this one shows the situation of Project TouCans with repsect to the aurora. It's the small green light on the right hand edge above the tent

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