Aurora Photography white balance settings

Recently there's been a plethora of "aurora" images hitting the Irish media and web. One thing I've noticed is how some are believed to be the aurora simply because there's a grren hue in the sky.
I stress that it's extremly important to be familiar with the white balance settings of your digital camera and how it can affect to resulting image.

Here's an image I took the other night while out photographing the night sky.

What's that green hue on the left? Must be the Northern Lights!! NOT This is the reflection of the lights from a football club. This was shot in full AUTO WB mode.

Here's the same shot in Dayligh WB mode


This is truer to what I actually saw. A typical light pollution scene with the Orange glow. I've cranked up the saturation in these images to emphasize the colours.

Here it is in Tungsten WB mode

Again the green area of cloud.

So check you have the correct White Balance Setting.
In the above example we can see that Daylight setting was probably the correct setting.

Here's another example from the January storm.

Daylight White Balance (No light pollution in this area), but the aurora didn't look this yellow.


AUTO White Balance mode
Auto was the correct mode in this instance. More realistic green hues.

One other thing.....

This image shows:
cloud in front of Aurora masking the aurora from view. You cannot see the aurora through clouds.
Stars visible through the aurora.
Bright light at bottom left of image is a ship on the horizon!

Also remember that the aurora will cover a large expanse of the northern horizon.