Virtual Content Has No Border

Tag: northern

  • Northern Lights: How to Take Stunning Photos with Android Devices

    Northern Lights: How to Take Stunning Photos with Android Devices

    Witnessing the Northern Lights, or aurora borealis, is a breathtaking experience. This natural phenomenon, typically visible in the far northern regions, paints the sky with vibrant colors as a result of solar storms and the interaction of charged particles with atmospheric gases. This weekend, an extraordinary geomagnetic storm offers a rare opportunity for many, including those in the United States, to observe the Northern Lights.

    Google Pixel

    Here’s a step-by-step guide to photographing the Northern Lights with your Google Pixel or other Android devices:

    Prepare Your Environment: Find a location with dark skies and minimal light pollution. A tripod is essential to stabilize your phone for long-exposure photography.

    Setting Up Your Google Pixel:
    – Mount your phone on the tripod and open the camera app.
    – Switch to “Night Sight” mode. If the aurora is visible to the naked eye, this mode may suffice.
    – For astrophotography, ensure the phone is steady. A star icon will appear on the shutter button after a few seconds of stillness. Tap it to begin a 4-minute capture process, resulting in a still photo and a time-lapse.

    Using Other Android Phones:
    – Standard night modes on phones like Samsung Galaxy can capture the Northern Lights if they’re visible without assistance.
    – For fainter auroras, use manual shooting modes with long exposure settings. In “Night” mode, select “Max” exposure, or in “Pro” mode, set the “Speed” to 5-6 seconds.

    This guide aims to help you immortalize the fleeting beauty of the Northern Lights through photography, ensuring that you can relive the magic whenever you desire.

  • Astronomers Witness Sun’s Own Northern Lights for the First Time

    Astronomers Witness Sun’s Own Northern Lights for the First Time

    In a groundbreaking discovery, scientists have observed a mesmerizing display of radio waves resembling the Northern Lights on Earth, known as auroras, occurring on the surface of the sun. This captivating solar lightshow unfolded approximately 25,000 miles above a sunspot, a magnetic dark area on the sun’s surface. This marks the first time such a phenomenon has been observed on our own sun.

    Northern Lights

    Astronomers, based on Earth, detected these bursts of radio waves over the course of a week. Unlike typical transient solar radio bursts lasting minutes or hours, this discovery is described as “quite unlike” anything seen before, with the potential to reshape our understanding of magnetic processes on stars. The findings were published in the journal Nature Astronomy on November 13.

    On Earth, auroras result from energetic solar debris interacting with the atmosphere near the poles, where the protective magnetic field is weaker. This interaction causes oxygen and nitrogen molecules to release energy in the form of light, creating the beautiful and colorful displays seen in the night sky.

    Solar debris is usually ejected from the sun when magnetic fields around sunspots become tangled and then suddenly snap. This release of energy leads to solar flares and explosive jets of solar material, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs).

    By pointing a radio telescope at a sunspot on the sun’s surface, researchers detected an aurora-like emission above it. They believe this emission is caused by electrons from solar flares being accelerated along the sunspot’s powerful magnetic field lines. Unlike Earth’s auroras, these sunspot aurora emissions occur at much higher frequencies due to the sunspot’s magnetic field being thousands of times stronger than Earth’s.

    The scientists express excitement about this discovery, as it introduces new avenues for studying the sun’s activity. They have already started examining archival data to uncover hidden evidence of past solar auroras. The research not only enhances our understanding of our own sun but also opens doors to studying stars beyond our solar system.

    The researchers are in the early stages of assembling the puzzle of how energetic particles and magnetic fields interact, especially in the presence of long-lasting sunspots. This knowledge has broad implications, not only for understanding our sun but also for gaining insights into the activities of stars far beyond our solar system.