A Holiday Aurora

Madison Skyline Looking North from Olin Park

Multicolored Curtains

Luminous Clouds and Streaks

The camera helps to bring the colors out, but they were quite evident to the eye. Even the subtle purple color was spotted first visually and then photographed. I tried to make sure that the colors presented in the photograph are close to what could be seen. I know a lot of people boost the colors tremendously in Photoshop. I usually give them a little boost also to bring out subtle details, but I try to keep them looking natural. My exposures were not very long - these cityscape pictures were only exposed for 10 seconds at ISO 800. Normally, I try to use as low an ISO as possible to reduce grain and keep the pictures looking as natural as possible. In this case, I had to boost the ISO up to 800 because the auroras were moving so fast that I didn't want to use a longer exposure.

Aurora "Movies"

These are a set of animated aurora sequences that are displayed using PowerPoint. For best results, save these files to your computer and then view them using PowerPoint 2003 or later (to get the nice smooth transitions). If you don't have PowerPoint, you can download the free PowerPoint viewer here.

Colorful Aurora Storm PowerPoint Movie	Downtown Auroras PowerPoint Movie	Orion Aurora Flow PowerPoint Movie	Verona Auroras PowerPoint Movie