R ecent solar activity has resulted in more chances to see the aurora in the UK, and the night of 10th October 2024 was a particular treat!
A burst at 10pm was frustrated by cloud cover in Kidlington, but if you happened to stay up past midnight, you might have caught the best lights of the night.
For about twenty minutes from 00.10am, the aurora was clearly visible to the naked eye: reds, greens and purples swirled across the stars. At one point, almost the whole sky was a rust-red colour.
I took these photos in my back garden on Edinburgh Drive with my Google Pixel phone camera.
Predicting the aurora is a tricky business but if you are on social media, you're more likely to get information at short notice about when and where to see the lights.
If you missed it this time around, the good news is that the solar activity is due to continue over the next three years, so there should be more opportunities to see the 'Northern Lights' (top tip: they're not always in the north!). If you want to try photographing them, your phone camera is likely to have a 'night setting' which means the aperture stays open for a few seconds, taking in more light than usual and improving your chance of picking up the aurora. It's also helpful to be as far away from a street light as possible, and if you want to see it with your eyes as opposed to through a camera lens, you'll stand a better chance if you can be out in the dark from twenty minutes in advance to allow your eyes to adjust.
Happy aurora hunting!