Aurora imaging with an iPhone

30 seconds is way too long for active Aurorae and you really dont need the tracker, just mount the phone on a tripod somehow (rubberbands, zipties, whatever, it doesnt need to be high tech). These high alert type events often result in fast moving "curtain" like filaments that move across several degrees in a matter of seconds, so really you have to be there to see how long is too long but 30 seconds is definitely too long by a factor of at least 4.

If you are on the southern end of the area that is forecasted to get aurora then maybe you could go 30s, they will not be moving that fast if they are only seen at the horizon.

Alien_Enthusiast:
Is it better to use an iPhone or a 533 sensor camera with some lens?

The wider the better, so the phone. If you have some ultra wide 10mm focal length lens then maybe the 533, but that sounds like a pain to set up.

Here in 60N we had very obvious bright purple naked eye aurora a couple hours ago. From bortle 8 that is, and it should be said that at this time of year there is no darkness, only nautical twilight and they were still incredibly bright - purple on a dark blue sky, not seen that one before. We are going to see a whole bunch of amazing aurora images posted over the weekend.

Btw if I have hundreds of frames, and I want to turn them into a video, what software would be ideal?

(Frames are pre-aligned)

Preferably something that doesn't crop data quality too much

Alien_Enthusiast:
Btw if I have hundreds of frames, and I want to turn them into a video, what software would be ideal?

(Frames are pre-aligned)

Preferably something that doesn't crop data quality too much

PIPP can turn stills into a video, and doesnt reduce quality if you choose uncompressed file formats for output. https://pipp.software.informer.com/

Be warned though, the file size will be quite large that way. But give it a try.

Here is what it looked like in the middle of a city in 60N at nautical twilight:

Should be good shooting in Pro mode or raw for like 20 seconds or so. I was successful propping the phone up on the ground and just taking a 20 second exposure with my s22 ultra. This photo was in March at about 68° Lat, but same concept. 20 sec at f/1.8 ISO 160.