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Archive 2013 · To Aurora or Not to Aurora

JimFox
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · To Aurora or Not to Aurora

Well this is Yellowstone as most of you will know, it's the Great Fountain Geyser. The day I was there, I had to wait about 4 hours, but Great Fountain decided to put on the greatest show I had ever seen from it, but then that's a story and a shot for another day....

After the crowds left, I was left alone as usual and I waited a bit for the stars to come up.

I knew the angle wouldn't be perfect, ideally it would have been cool to have gotten the Milky Way over the geyser itself, but with it being pitch dark, I wasn't going to go off traipsing through the thermal fields...

So I opted for the pano view, this is 10 shots from the D800. Now the strangest thing was the color, especially the smaller pocket of magenta with the rest of the shot being green. When I took my first shot over the geyser and got that look, I thought my camera was messing up... But I changed the composition slightly, and sure enough the purple area of color and the surrounding green was there again... so I went with it...

Now I wasn't sure I would do anything with this until I saw someone elses shot recently, I don't remember who, but they had shades of green in their shot and made a comment that it was from an aurora... now certainly as I was pretty far north, and shooting north to east, I thought, that could be the reason behind the different coloring.

I used PTGui for the stitching... it took it about 30 mins. Photoshop was faster in the stitching, but the shot came out like it had been shot in a fisheye... where as PTGui had it stitched and looking all sweet for me.

Aurora or not... I hope the shot works.

All comments are welcome.

Jim

PS... not sure how others are handling it, I didn't look to see the actual size when I first stitched it, but Photoshop wouldn't save it after I loaded it in it and did some layer work. It came up with an error telling me I needed to look up in the help about how to export the image... yikes! So I ended up down sizing the pano slightly which made it small enough to then save.

Jul 17, 2013 at 08:05 PM

kellyakinsart
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · To Aurora or Not to Aurora

Great shot. The milky way looks like a rainbow in the sky. Very different, seeing the whole thing like that. I don't know what to make of the color, but it's cool. Could you see these colors in person, or was it just a camera thing?

Kelly

Jul 17, 2013 at 08:23 PM

JimFox
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · To Aurora or Not to Aurora

kellyakinsart wrote:
Great shot. The milky way looks like a rainbow in the sky. Very different, seeing the whole thing like that. I don't know what to make of the color, but it's cool. Could you see these colors in person, or was it just a camera thing?

Kelly

Thanks Kelly! There might have been a tinge of green that I could detect, but pretty much it just looked like a normal night sky until I took the shot and looked at. The longer exposures have a way of grabbing the color that is not really visible to our eye and then making that color pop.

Jim

Jul 17, 2013 at 08:27 PM

Dustin Gent
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · To Aurora or Not to Aurora

interesting shot and composition. You may have caught the Aurora as it was flaring - either just starting or ending.

Jul 17, 2013 at 08:37 PM

John Richter
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · To Aurora or Not to Aurora

I really like this one, Jim. The reflecting stars are really cool. I see 2 geysers for sure. Is that a 3rd in the distance?

JBR

Jul 17, 2013 at 08:38 PM

Ylwstonegirl
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · To Aurora or Not to Aurora

Sweet shot, Jim.

Kristine

Jul 17, 2013 at 09:11 PM

naturesmoments
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · To Aurora or Not to Aurora

Another stunning photograph Jim!!! Congratulations!

Jul 17, 2013 at 09:25 PM

John Zeman
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · To Aurora or Not to Aurora

Absolutely beautiful!

Jul 17, 2013 at 09:35 PM

Cookies
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · To Aurora or Not to Aurora

Way cool shot Jim! The green looks like airglow to me, not the aurora. The magenta/red on the far left might be a subtle aurora... hard to say... what night did you shoot this? There was a nice display over the northern US on July 14/15.

Jul 17, 2013 at 09:37 PM

harshaj1
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · To Aurora or Not to Aurora

Beautiful capture Jim.
Harsha

Jul 17, 2013 at 09:40 PM

dbehrens
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · To Aurora or Not to Aurora

Looks like faint northern lights to me. Nice capture! Dave

Jul 17, 2013 at 09:43 PM

Kee Woo Rhee
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · To Aurora or Not to Aurora

Terrific shot, Jim. Yes, "To Aurora or Not to Aurora".. that is the question, right?
But, no matter what, this is hell of a nice shot.
Kee

Jul 17, 2013 at 09:47 PM

AndrewThomas
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · To Aurora or Not to Aurora

Hi Jim, there are elements of this I like, the geyser and the milky way are awesome. However, I find the boardwalk and the right hand lower part of the image quite distracting. Like you said you didn't want to go off into the thermal fields in the dark, though I think if you had you may have come back with something extra special. Did you have an opportunity after taking these, and realising just how special these images are, to return the next night when you may have had a chance to survey the surrounds a bit more during the daylight? I reckon that curve of the MW right over the geyser would be a classic!
cheers Andrew

Jul 17, 2013 at 10:31 PM

Mstic
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · To Aurora or Not to Aurora

nice shot, even focusing just on the milky way would have been a good shot too

i agree with Andrew, the boardwalk is a little distracting. But hindsight is always 20/20, great work

Jul 17, 2013 at 10:44 PM

AMaji
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · To Aurora or Not to Aurora

Just stunning Jim. Great work.

Jul 17, 2013 at 10:55 PM

Derek Weston
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · To Aurora or Not to Aurora

The (majority at least of the) color you're seeing is quite likely airglow:

Image examples:
https://www.google.com/search?q=airglow+night+sky&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=mmrnUcWDK-WyyAGNy4GIAw&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1745&bih=868

Example of airglow to the right, aurora to the left:
www.extremeinstability.com/stormpics/2013/2013_06_28pano4.jpg

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airglow

I've seen this quite a bit, as well as the aurora borealis. You'll usually have curtains and or movement with the aurora. To me aurora has a rather distinct look and is more visible naked eye than airglow.

That said, perhaps a bit of of aurora mixed in -- it looks like you've got the sagittarius arm of the milky way to the right side of your photo, meaning it'd be the opposite of that (left) to the north. Still looks like airglow to me. (for example, with auroral activity you'd have the pink above the green generally)

Anyhow...

Very cool. Love the ambition of staying out there while totally dark.. lots of wild stuff lurking about.

This is a shot that would be much cooler blown up a bit so I feel more drawn into the scene. I like big panos I can look around at.

And that left side to me has another shot itself with that geyser, love the way the stars lit it up.

Jul 17, 2013 at 11:21 PM

JimFox
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · To Aurora or Not to Aurora

John Richter wrote:
I really like this one, Jim. The reflecting stars are really cool. I see 2 geysers for sure. Is that a 3rd in the distance?

JBR

Hey John, thanks so much. Yeah, there are geysers all over in that basin. It's not uncommon to see up to a dozen geysers spouting in the background.

Jim

Jul 18, 2013 at 12:18 AM

JimFox
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · To Aurora or Not to Aurora

Cookies wrote:
Way cool shot Jim! The green looks like airglow to me, not the aurora. The magenta/red on the far left might be a subtle aurora... hard to say... what night did you shoot this? There was a nice display over the northern US on July 14/15.

Thanks Chris, I am glad you liked it. Hmmm... I had never heard of airglow before, but it's sounding more like that's what it is. This was taken closer to July 1st... I would have to look, but about there.

Jim

Jul 18, 2013 at 12:21 AM

Nori
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · To Aurora or Not to Aurora

Beautiful image Jim, perfect the way it is

Jul 18, 2013 at 11:27 AM

jleom
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · To Aurora or Not to Aurora

Very nice Jim. I like it.
What were your settings?

Leo

Jul 18, 2013 at 12:17 PM

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