Aurora Borealis

There was promise of the strongest aurora since the 2003 "knock your socks off experience". However, it did not materialize for us in our location of Maine. 

But, I did get to practice some nighttime photography with my iPhone 16 pro. And, I was totally pleased that my photos were in focus! Note: I did not get over to the south end of the pond to photograph the aurora looking north as I couldn't safely walk down the snowy side of the street in the dark. Nor could I break trail and tromp through the snow to the pond in the dark while carrying the tripod. So, I tromped a short trail to the middle of our front yard. Not optimal, but at least I got a few photos.

Geesh! It was windy out. I was thinking that I would need to sandbag my tripod legs, but they were stuck so far into the snow that I had good stabilization. We started out with a bit of cloud cover and a slight tint of red in the night sky. See the Pleiades star cluster at the top of the photo!

I was able to capture a bit of aurora activity looking northwest. I didn't last too long outside as it was so cold! My fingers were freezing and my knees were knocking!

Phone settings: I activated "Night Mode" by tapping on the moon icon. I tried to set the exposure time to 10 seconds, but it set itself to 3 seconds. That's okay... I tapped on the screen to set the focus lock. Then, I tried to set the timer for 3 seconds to avoid camera shake when touching the shutter button.