, it explained that while airglow and auroral activity are separate, increased solar activity is boosting airglow.explains that any photographer in a dark enough area can pick up faint airglow, although the airglow Watson saw is especially dramatic.that he has never seen anything like the airglow on display as June 21 ticked over to June 22.
It has been a good year for night photography so far for Watson. He has seen the northern lights twice already this year, the first of which was mostly a reddish band, a, and the other a more “traditional aurora with deep pink and red to the north.” “I love being out at night under the dark and starry skies and particularly watching the celestial bodies rise and set along the horizon. I started taking photos of the moon, but recently have been getting more into long exposure nightscapes, particularly Milky Way photos with natural settings like mountains, flowers, or trees in the foreground, but also photos of clusters and conjunctions,” Watson says.
“The best, though, is capturing the transient phenomena like light pillars, auroras, and these airglow photos. I am pretty new to long exposure photography and working on a shoestring setup, but I have good luck and a strong night sense, and probably most importantly I live in an area with minimal light pollution and artificial skyglow so it’s easier to notice and capture the unexpected and fleeting moments.
“I was looking through my telescope and as my eyes adapted to the dark I started to notice what looked like thin high clouds, but they were glowing, they had a light of their own — a white glow. Because there’s only a little light pollution where I live, usually clouds are darker, so the glowing was my first clue. Then I noticed the rays, they weren’t random cloud shapes floating along, I could see the ripples with my naked eye. At that point, I knew I needed to get the camera.