Tips to spot Northern Lights in Oxfordshire TONIGHT after red alert

Yahoo

16-04-2025

The Northern Lights will likely be visible again over Oxfordshire tonight after a red alert was issued.
Stargazers across the country were lucky enough to catch several glimpses of the Northern Lights, also known as the Aurora Borealis, several times in 2024.
Although sightings have been less frequent since the turning of the new year, a red alert has been issued by AuroaWatch UK to indicate that a sighting is possible tonight (Wednesday, April 16).
Photographers across the country spotted the phenomenon last year and captured some stunning photos.
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Red alert: aurora likely. Issued 2025-04-16 13:59 UTC (14:59 BST) by @aurorawatchuk. #aurora pic.twitter.com/dbt5w0PxxK
— AuroraWatch UK (@aurorawatchuk) April 16, 2025
If you are aiming to spot the Northern Lights in Oxfordshire tonight, some tips have been shared by Tom Kerss.
A Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and Chief Aurora Chaser at Hurtigruten, Tom has compiled a list to help capture the aurora on camera.
The Northern Lights. (Image: Unsplash)
1. Do a warm, dry run first
Before embarking on a photoshoot of nature's most compelling sky-bound phenomenon, take the opportunity to be kind to your future self.
Aurora-chasing is generally undertaken in the dark and the cold, in conditions that don't lend themselves to easy operation of your camera.
In all likelihood, you'll need to make adjustments as you shoot, and anything you can do to avoid frustration will enable better results.
Get used to feeling your way around your camera's controls, so you won't need to shine a flashlight on the back to find the settings.
Pre-set your camera to its manual mode, ensure your lens is set to manual focus, and turn the focus ring to the infinity point.
Open up the aperture and start with a fairly high iso setting such that your live view will pick up the Northern Lights.
When you're outside, fine-tune the focus by using a bright star or planet.
This will typically be close to the maximum travel of the focus ring, but not all the way to the end.
Then shoot confidently and adjust your exposure as necessary.
Colours featured usually include pink and green. (Image: Jane Barlow / PA Wire)2. Be honest, is your phone a better option?
We are in a golden age for smartphone photography.
Just a few years ago, I would have discouraged aurora-chasers from relying on even a flagship phone as their sole camera, but developments in technology continue apace, and today the latest phones can capture genuinely superb Northern Lights photos.
Under scrutiny, it's evident that a dedicated camera, with precision optics and a large sensor, can greatly outperform a phone, but if your goal is simply to share your images on social media, you may not need to drag expensive and bulky equipment out into the biting arctic air.
Still, you should heed my earlier advice about practising and familiarising yourself with settings beforehand, and be sure to keep your phone's screen brightness at a minimum to avoid dazzling yourself and others trying to enjoy the show.
Smartphones capture multiple images, accumulating light and applying computational corrections.
This reduces the level of control you have over the final result, but it's entirely hassle-free.
Nevertheless, you may wish to make some adjustments, so consider taking gloves that are touch-screen compatible.
The aurora borealis in Iceland. (Image: Owen Humphreys / PA)3. There are no good vibrations
Although the Northern Lights form in the Earth's atmosphere, we tend to think of them as astronomical phenomena, and since aurora photos are typically replete with stars, this might best be termed astrophotography.
Sure enough, all the challenges of astrophotography are present here, chief among them the need to take relatively long exposures.
This exposes us to the impacts of all sorts of potential movement, such as the rotation of the Earth, but one thing we can control is the vibration of the camera itself, which we want to eliminate if possible.
For long exposures, it's imperative to shoot using a tripod and preferably a remote shutter control.
If you don't have the latter, one solution is to set your camera's 2-second timer, so you can pull the shutter and let go of it before the shot is taken.
Smartphones are surprisingly good in handheld mode, as they accumulate a series of shorter exposures and perform image stabilisation, but they too benefit from the use of a tripod.
With your smartphone on a tripod, see if you can increase the exposure time.
Some will limit you to about three seconds handheld, but support five, ten or up to thirty seconds on a tripod.
You'll see an improved appearance of background stars from a longer exposure.
A red alert has been issued ahead of tonight. (Image: Owen Humphreys / PA)4. Freezing the action
But speaking of exposures, you may wish to go the other way.
Increasingly, dedicated cameras are incorporating highly performant sensors, which produce surprisingly clean high-iso images, relatively free of the digital noise that would have made a shot totally unusable in years gone by.
In combination with very fast lenses, such as those with an f-number of 1.4, modern cameras can freeze dynamic aurora displays with exposures lasting a fraction of a second.
To achieve this, you may need to use iso settings exceeding 12800, but there are great software solutions for cleaning up these images as long as you shoot in a raw format.
Short exposures during a fast-moving display can reveal fine, fleeting structures that speak to the complex nature of the Earth's magnetic field, and the large electrical currents that give rise to the Northern Lights.
The Northern Lights over Stonehenge. (Image: Alamy / PA)5. Don't forget the camera of the soul
In my time, I've seen thousands of budding aurora-chasers capture photos they can be proud of, but I've also noticed another phenomenon that leads me to my final point.
Some get carried away with photography, so much so that they forget to enjoy what's happening above them.
The Northern Lights have a unique quality that cannot be captured by the sensor.
They are self-luminous and impress themselves on the eye, offering subtle hints of colour, and they move in a creaturely and alluring way that is hard to forget.
It's so often the case that the things we remember best are the things we don't photograph, perhaps because at a subconscious level, we know we will have to rely on our memory to relive the experience.
I can't stress enough how true this is for the Northern Lights.
When I close my eyes, I remember the moments I wasn't filming.
It's true that you can't share these photos of the mind, but you can feel them, and that's worth far more than a thousand words.