Astronomy --- Aurora May 2024

In the night of 10th to 11th of May 2024, a big solar storm produced auroras so bright, that they could be seen as far south as Germany.

I myself tried my hand at taking pictures from my balcony in the middle of Cologne, and was actually successful.

    

Background

As early as 9.5.2024, it was announced on several websites that auroras could become visible down to our latitudes. I haven't had much hope, but in the night from May 10th to 11th, the forecasts became more and more impressive and we had cloudless skies in Cologne.

Between 0 and 1 o'clock in the moring of May 11th, I stood on my north-northeast facing balcony, looked at the starry sky and thought I would see gossamer, colorless cloud streaks. But they were too parallel and straight for the usual contrail remains, something was strange about it. I pulled out my mobile phone and out of my hand the display showed slightly red and green colors in the sky.

Then I mounted the phone on a tripod and took a series of pictures with the installed photo apps. The result is impressive and I can only recommend everyone, when there are forecasts of auroras in Europe, just pull out your phone, switch to night mode or high sensitivity and give it a try. Presumably, its display shows more than you can see with the naked eye, even from a light-polluted city center.

An hour later it was over, all shots after 2 o'clock no longer showed any Auroras. This is actually a very short pleasure, can start very suddenly and end quickly and unexpectedly.

Related websites:
Spaceweather.com
NOAA Aurora Forecast
NOAA Planetary K-Index
Wikipedia - Aurora

Images

Of the 20 photos, the following are the three best. More was hardly feasible from Cologne with a cheap Samsung Galaxy A22 and little experience with the installed photo apps.

All three images were taken at ISO 6400 and an exposure time of 4 seconds after 1:02 a.m. on May 11th, 2024. The contrast has been increased to reduce the backlight of the urban lighting.

There are certainly a billion more beautiful photos of the Northern Lights, but I am completely satisfied. I "saw" and photographed Northern Lights for the first time, and that as a quick shot from my balcony.