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The dunes are a newly discovered kind of aurora – and we have unseen photos

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The Northern Lights are on many people’s bucket lists. The celestial phenomenon occurs in the upper levels of our atmosphere. We’ve long sought explanations for these beautiful lights, and extensive research has come up with many answers. We thought we had it all covered until something strange happened. Recently, in Finland, a scientist discovered a new type of Aurora.

Each Aurora we see has a classification, it makes it easier to describe. For example,  these ripples and waves of light got a cool-sounding label like ‘corona’, which describes an Aurora straight above us. The one that appears as if it’s falling straight down. This new observation, labelled ‘dunes,’ was discovered by citizen-scientist Pirjo Koski and her team in Finland.

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How to shoot Northern lights with a handheld smartphone

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Smartphones are getting smarter with every new generation, and so are their cameras. But when you combine a good photographer and a good smartphone, the sky is the limit. Quite literally. Zach Honig of The Points Guy recently shot magnificent Northern lights with nothing but his iPhone, handheld at a 3s exposure. He shared his experience and some photos with DIYP, so let’s see how he did it.

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The SiOnyx Aurora action camera shoots full colour video even under moonlight

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One of the biggest problems with action cameras today is their ability to deal with very low light. Or, to be more accurate, a lack of ability to shoot under very low light conditions. The new Aurora from US-based night vision company SiOnyx is a new action camera that claims to be able to shoot under light levels as low as moonlight.

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Sionyx Aurora camera features color night vision, and it’s a hit on Kickstarter

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We’ve seen a lot of action cameras that packs a lot of gimmicky features, but Sionyx’s Aurora is the first ever to incorporate color night vision. Since it launched its Kickstarter campaign, it’s received a lot of interest and reached its $50,000 goal in just four hours.

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Timelapse video of Aurora Borealis from an airplane window will take your breath away

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Shots from an airplane window can be truly beautiful. And shots of Northern lights can be even more beautiful. But how about combining these two? Well, this is exactly what Aryeh Nirenberg did. This lucky photographer saw Aurora from an airplane window at 35,000ft and created a wonderful timelapsevideo that will take your breath away.
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Tips for finding and capturing the lunar fog bow

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A month ago I had never seen a lunar fog bow, now I have seen three. I got to see my first lunar fog bow on December 17 last year. Last night I got to see two more of these elusive phenomena. We had lots of fog around the city of Östersund and since it was the night of the full moon, I drove around chasing locations where I could see these beautiful bows.

I got two relatively good ones on photo two hours apart. I’ve included the time and height of the Moon when the photos was taken.

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How I captured rare lunar fog bow and Northern lights in the same photo

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Throughout the years I’ve seen lots of different phenomena in the sky but one that have been on my bucket list for quite some time is the very rare lunar fog bow. I’ve seen photos of it but I’ve never seen it in real life, until now. This Saturday turned out to be my lucky night. I hadn’t planed to go out at all but after having a look to the north a saw some faint Northern Lights so I decided to head out to see if the activity would increase.

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Photos of The Perseids Meteor Shower With The Milky Way and Northern Lights!

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Sometimes the cosmic forces of the universe just align to give you the opportunity to produce some really really unique photographs.

There is no other way to explain how I was able to capture these photographs of the Perseids Meteor Shower with the Milky Way and the Northern Lights in a single frame.

The unlikely chain of events goes something like this…

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From Above: What It’s Like To Be An Astronaut Photographer With Don Petit

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For a lot of us, travelling to space and taking photographs sounds like a dream job. For Don Pettit, it’s just another day at the office. In fact, part of his official NASA training included working with a number of professional photographers and trainers. Of course, being an astronaut photographer isn’t just taking beautiful photos from outer space. Pettit said in an interview with SmugMug, there’s actually a lot of engineering photography to be done, which Pettit says is actually quite uninteresting to the public.

“We have to take macro images of pins in an electrical connector or a bit of grunge in a hydraulic quick-disconnect fitting or little patterns that might develop on the surface of one of the windows. These things need to be documented so the images can be downlinked for engineers on the ground to assess what’s happening to the systems on space station. We get training specifically on doing these engineering images, which, for the most part, are not really interesting to the public.

Photography on the space station is more than just taking a bunch of pretty pictures. We take pictures of Earth and the surroundings of earth, and these pictures represent a scientific data set recorded now for over 14 years. About 1.2 million pictures were taken as of July 2012.”

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