Tuesday, January 20, 2026

Aurora Borealis is crazy awesome tonight

Tonight the aurora borealis is super active all over Maine. For me, it was not visible to the naked eye, but I could see it on the cell phone camera. It started out green (the most common color) from excited oxygen atoms from 60-150 miles in altitude.

I went outside from 6pm-7pm to photograph it from the front yard again. Had I been over at Caesar Pond, it would have been magnificent. I attached my cell phone to a tripod to get clear photos.

We had such a great light show with curtains of light shifting to and fro.

The sky was so clear and cold at 10F. My fingers nearly froze! I have the best neighbors who all turned their outside lights off so that I could have as dark a setting as possible.

I had a difficult time choosing which photos I liked best. Even though they are similar, you can see the shift of color over time. 

I took 3 second exposures often seconds apart.

I couldn't be more pleased with the iPhone 16 pro camera. It did a magnificent job with night sky photos.

Carrying a cell phone is so much easier than hauling around my DSLR cameras, especially for nighttime photography in winter.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Absolutely gorgeous! Thanks for braving the bone-chilling cold for these photos.

Anonymous said...

Absolutely beautiful photos!

Anonymous said...

These are extraordinary! Gorgeous!