capturing a suprise aurora!

I had just one a star tracker through a competition I entered on instagram and decided to try and learn how to polar align it.

I went for a drive out to Mt. Noorat and get the milky way over the mountain. Back when I tried this, I realised I was no good at aligning so I decided to just get some shots with my camera and no tracker.

I noticed a strange glow on the horizon to the left where there is no light pollution, checks the aurora group i'm in and sees there is activity. I couldn't believe that I managed to capture the aurora by mistake!

I have sat on this shot for months because I wasn't able to process it in a way that I liked. That was until recently, with some advice I downloaded StarNet and have been able to make a massive improvement to my astro shots and i'm able to pull way more data out then ever before.

This shot is made up of 20 shots for the sky at 20s, f2.8, iso 3200 and 3 foreground shots median stacked for less noise. The image was then processed in deNoise to remove more of the noise.

Please let me know if you would like me to make a post on the process that I use to make the milky way pop!