Red Aurora on the 3rd December 2025

Last night I unexpectedly had an aurora warning beginning around 18:00 UT with a strength of 380.8 nT on the Aurora Watch magnetometer. Initially, I thought that the moon would be too bright to see anything (it was one day until full) but a friend alerted me to the fact that the aurora was active. The alerts kept coming - the magnetometer at Sumburgh Head recorded 560.2 nT at 19:00 and before falling back to 218.6 nT at 20:00. At around 19:00 UT I was outside with my telescope trained on Saturn when my friend put something up on WhatsApp about what he could see. I turned round and was surprised that I could see a red glow in the north. I went inside to grab my camera and tripod and my first picture was at 19:11 UT:-

You can see red vertical rays through Ursa Major and a little bit of green glow below this. This was taken on a Sony RX100 with an exposure of 4s at f/1.8, ISO1600. The display continued on until 19:21 UT but seemed to be weakening:-

This image was taken at 19:16 UT and I had reduced the shutter speed to 2.5s. The red vertical rays can still be seen but are now at a lower altitude. I took a picture looking more to the north west but there was little evidence of activity in this direction apart from a vague red glow. 

After this I went inside for a bit (it was pretty cold by then and frost was starting to form on the grass). I came out again 30 minutes later at 19:46 to find that the activity had ramped up considerably:-

This was again a 2.5s exposure at f/1.8, ISO1600. There is now a a much more intense general red glow with slanting vertical rays overlaying this. The green glow is at the base of this is still visible. The top of the rays are still lower in altitude than the ones taken at 19:11UT. Looking in the north west the activity had also increased there:-

This was a 2.5s exposure taken at 19:48 UT. The constellation of Lyra is at the extreme left of this image and strong red rays are just seen over the roof top. To the far right a much stronger underlying green glow is evident. At 19:49 I took an image to the north east:-

Not much activity can be made out in this direction and the moon just creeps into the top of the picture. There is some general pink glow to the far left. The display in the north was getting to be very pretty by 19:50 UT:-

 Again a 2.5s exposure. It constantly changed and towards 19:55 UT began to die down again.

 This picture was taken at 19:53 UT.

All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2025