`Steve' makes another visit

`Steve' made another visit to Shetland and like last week it only showed in the south mainland. This is the third time its showed in the last five weeks

We had a lot of cloud and heavy rain but it just cleared for a few photos from outside the house in Sandwick

We have a lot of light pollution on the road but Steve was bright enough to beat it

Just after taking these heavy rain arrived again.

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Aurora beats the cloud

Cloud is always a problem with the Aurora, some nights its complete cloud cover and that's when a superb Aurora will be happening overhead.

Other times its part cover, as this night was and you get some tantalising views of the Aurora as it shows occasionally

It was at least dark until after total cloud came in so i used a bit of light painting to highlight the foreground

These were taken down at Maywick on the westside

You have to make sure where you are walking so a good torch is very important to get you to the spot where you can start to photograph

Another thing to watch out for is the tide coming in as sometimes it comes round the back of you and when its dark can be a hazard

Its always good to get some green reflecting on the sea

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St Ninian Red Alert

 We have had a good run of consecutive Aurora nights but not for Shetland as a whole. The north especially Yell and Unst had a few good nights then it was the turn of the south mainland.  

Aurora alerts are good, they give you time to get out fast to see and photograph the Aurora. I always have a packed camera bag ready and make sure the batteries are fully charged. 

On this night i came across one shetland Aurora Hunter who packed up after 5 mins after his camera died.

Anyway arriving down at St Ninian's it was very dark, the moon wasn't due to rise for a couple of hours. I prefer to have a 1/2 moon to light up the landscape and keep the ISO down so producing  a good quality photo

Another blessing was no wind, very unusual for Shetland so little chance of vibration.

I was out at Amber alert and managed to catch the Red Alert Aurora which lasted about 2 mins, no chance of getting to a site if leaving it too late.

It was a pity about the cloud but you could see the purple colour above the powerful green arc, it even stretched across St Ninian's tombolo which is to the west proving it was indeed a powerful aurora.

News came out the Steve was showing but i could only just see it through the cloud which moved in, back home in Sandwick several photographers manage to capture some good photos. 

It was only a month since the last sighting

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