Weather Ramble

A brief (~1 hour) but very intense aurora display occurred on the 1st of Jan 2025 at 17.30 in Telford / UK. This display was easily visible to the naked eye showing the magnetic field lines of red with a deep red background to the north. As usual the camera (both SLR and Phone) picked up way more colours and details than those visible to the naked eye, as shown below:

As well as the aurora to the North there was (unbelievably again) the Stable Auroral Red (SAR) arc running overhead from west to east, although I did not have chance to photograph this, this time (I was too busy photographing the main display), the arc was visible to the naked eye and looked very much like the same phenomenon I captured previously HERE and HERE during the 2 big events of 2024.

As I understand it a SAR is the glowing of the electric ring current around Earth which is supercharged by the aurora / solar wind. It’s both an aurora event and not an aurora itself (different physics)

Today marks the end of 2 weeks of no sunshine also known as anti-cyclonic (high pressure) Gloom

The was the 2nd major geomagnetic storm of 2024 and this aurora event did not disappoint. The event was on a par with the May 10th event having an overhead aurora corona; a constant green arc (for hours) with red and purple curtains and even an orange (which I understand is a visual mixing of Oxygen elements at different altitudes, i.e. combining of the colours red and green). This aurora did not have any blue (Nitrogen) colours unlike the May 10th event. This was indeed an historic event with (much like the 10th May event) a crystal clear sky, minimal impact of light from the low hanging moon and oodles of multi coloured aurorae for all of the UK to enjoy.

A few vertical purple pillars above the horizon

The sunset tonight in Telford looked like something out of the Star Wars Tatooine scene with the deep red colours through the Smokey haze a complete 1/2 hour before sunset. The dark smudge on the right-hand side (middle latitude) of the solar disc I believe is sunspot 3784 which was responsible for a brief geomagnetic storm yesterday. The moonrise was also a deep orange and a very special event to view

The vertical pillars (sweeping in from the left) were visible to the naked eye

This aurora / northern lights event will go down in history as one of the most easily viewed in the UK (of modern times). The G5 (KP9) storm was brought on by a conveyer belt of 6 X-class solar flares of which the 1st few disturbed earth's magnetic field so severely that it caused an aurora corona to form over the UK resulting in overhead (not to the north) multi-coloured displays to the delight of many aurora watchers around the UK and beyond. My photos from Telford are below:

The following photos are taken with / from my phone as opposed to my DSLR. As you can see from the pictures my phone camera was able capture way more of the aurora (than the DSLR), in a single frame. (albeit at a reduced resolution).

Download a large (16MB) panoramic of the aurora as visible over Wellington, Telford.

Camera settings used:

My Nikon D90 DSLR had the exposure set to 30 seconds with an ISO of 640 and a F stop of 3.5 on a fixed camera stand.

My Google Pixel phone was on night vision (handheld) and exposed for a mere second or 2

I also made a GIF of the Aurora Corona

Another decent showing of Aurora, although not as impressive as the thick green aurora arc that was visible on Shetland Webcam 3, at the same time

The rare weather phenomenon of nacreous "mother of pearl" clouds were visible over Telford on this day. Nacreous clouds are caused by high altitude ice crystals in the atmosphere scattering the light into "pearl like" rainbows

2023 continues to be an amazing year for seeing the aurora in England

The bright red vertical column at the end of the video was visible to the naked eye

This video is taken from the top of the Wrekin showing the rolling fog below, very atmospheric and only the 2nd time I’ve seen this.