New Book - Shetland Mirrie Dancers -aurora

New book- Mirrie Dancers out now

Order your copy below

This book is the result of 5 years research and photography. The aim of the book is to provide you with information on how active the aurora has been in Solar Cycle 25 and allows comparisons to other Solar maximums in Shetland since 1947.

You will find out more about how the aurora is created, new auroras found, SAR arcs and STEVE. It is a hardback A4 sized book with 214 pages and over 140 photos with 26 diagrams and graphs. You wont get a more comprehensive book and it makes a great present for those interested in the aurora, night sky or Shetland.

Buy it now £35 + £4.95pp (UK) can post Worldwide, to order send an email to shetaurorabook@gmail.com. Signed copies available.

Pulsating Shetland Aurora

March and the beginning of April have been excellent times for seeing the aurora in Shetland as we are in the Solar Maximum period

At this time of year this is known as the Russel McPherron effect, this is where the Earth has turned to line up the north pole directly with the sun. It is always a good time along with September.

We have had many good nights but also a few cloudy ones. I took a chance and headed over to the west and had a few breaks in the cloud.

on the nights of the 4 and 5 April there was a pulsating aurora, which is the first time I have seen it and it was impressive happening just after 11am and again in the early hours.

 

Shetland moonlit aurora

Auroras are good at anytime but i prefer a bit of moonlight to light up the foreground, and you can use a lower ISO so less noise 

these were taken down at Sandsayre under a strong aurora

 more at Shetland Aurora Hunter on Facebook

Sar with big Aurora -Shetland

Great to finally see a SAR arc (Stable Auroral  Red Arc. SAR arcs occur during geomagnetic storms when the inner edge of the ring current interacts with a contracted plasmasphere.. A portion of the ring current energy is dissipated as hear that gets conducted along geomagnetic field lines into the topside ionosphere.

You couldn't see the arc by eye only on camera and again most people didn't see it as it was south of the aurora similar to seeing STEVE.

With the snow the red really stood out with a colourful aurira