At Last

Finally a few clear night, which didn't coincide with other events. The first was out west following an excellent night at the accordion & fiddle festival at Skeld. The sky was full of stars and the aurora prediction was for KP5, so on the way back around midnight we stopped off at Park Hall, a venue i wanted to get to for while.

The building is now abandoned, but has all the right ingredients. It is set in ts own grounds, looks good in silhouette facing north with no light pollution. Although it was a bit breezy i set up the Nikon D7000 with the Tokina at 11mm with a faint trace of the aurora.

I picked this particular night as I needed the car headlight to hit the building and with a steady stream of cars heading back from the festival it provided a good opportunity as normally the road is very quiet normally.

While the stars looked good the aurora failed to get brighter, later i found out the it was the best around 8 pm. I also lit the building with a powerful LED which shows just how blue the light is compared to a better looking light, via the headlights.

The milky way looked good as well with little light pollution the stars really stood out

Then earlier this week another alert of KP5 with the forecast of a mainly clear night. i headed over to Bigton and set up at the top of the hill overlooking St Ninians tombolo. It was completely still, very unusual in Shetland but the cloud was the main problem, the forecast completely wrong again. The aurora hidden by the cloud.

This was a good time for astrophotography as the moon was new so no light pollution.

After this I headed up Scousburgh Hill with great views north, it was just a shame about the cloud, but it did have some breaks. Again this is normally a windy place but not on this night . I did include the giant bucket left after construction of some buildings which provided some foreground interest.