Aurora Failure

[Ken Rennie]

At least I have learned not to trust auto focus as my camera was giving me positive lock signals. Very cold with a 60mph Northerly wind. Moon is bathing the landscape and the flares from the St Fergus gas plant at the right side spoil the apparent brightness of the Aurora but it was still a magical experience. But why didn't I check the focus on my images? Doh! My Aorora app gave me a warning of 102nT but it was snowing and by the time that I captured this image the strength was down to 49nT. If I get a warning tomorrow night and have reasonably clear skies I will drive the 30 miles to the North coast and manually focus the blooming camera. Ken

 

[AlanLichty]

Ouch! That hurts. Hope you get another chance tomorrow night.

 

[Ben Egbert]

focus on celestial objects can be difficult. You probably could have focused on one of the lights and had enough dof.

 

[Ken Rennie]

Despite the temperatures I went back out and although the Aurora had faded and the purple colour had totally gone I managed to get everything in focus. Ken

 

[JimFox]

Hey Ken! Love the Aurora colors in #1. I think we have all had that time or two or three where we thought the camera was in focus but ended up not being in focus.

Have you tried that new sharpening tool in Photoshop that is supposed to be able to restore sharpness to blurry photos? Also, you could select all of the stars with the Color Range tool and then expand the selection by 5 pixels or so and auto fill them. That would at least help the sky?

#2 does look nice but not as good as #1 could have. How often do you get a chance to capture an Aurora?