Aurora Timelapse
At the beginning of 2023 I thought my chances of seeing an aurora in the Manawatu would have been near zero, Then last year I managed to capture a faint aurora with my camera, My brain enjoys learning, climbing down rabbit holes, and trying to turn the complex into a more simple, manageable proposition, I found there are websites, metrics and forecasts available.
Well 2024 has been a year for the record books, we have had a number of aurora displays. The display on the 11th of May will not be easily forgotten. Thousands upon thousands of New Zealanders made the effort to go and see it, stood in awe, and got a chance to see a side of nature really shown at this latitude.
But not everyone got a chance to see it. In fact a number of my friends missed out and regretted it. It took a little bit of the shine off the experience for me. I promised them that I would let them know if I saw anything happening again. So last week when I saw the x class flare happen, saw the favorable predictions and the early data which said something big was coming, I sounded the bells.
Pieter, Kelly and I chose to head up to the Saddle road to see if the display lived up to the predictions, I thought about photographing it but then I thought why not try something different. What about a timelapse? As you can see in the video above, it turned out pretty well. What a year! So far the timelapse of Facebook has been seen over 11000 times and shared by the council. Where a photo captures a beautiful moment a timelapse seems a better way of capturing the movement and time it lasted. I even made the animated gif below with the images.
