Clear skies and good Aurora

 

Finally a clear sky after weeks of cloud, gales and rain. This coincided with an Aurora which are now getting more regular as we progress to solar maximum

Headed down to Bigton early and picked  up the Aurora showing to the north

It was good to see the Milky Way above the Aurora

It was a totally dark night for a change with the Moon not due to show until the early hours

Good to see Orion as well

The Aurora seat, the best in Shetland

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I will be doing a talk on the Aurora in Sandwick on the 17 February if you would like to join me, tickets are free but you must book in advance

Aurora showing, then ...

 The night of the 21 February promised a good showing, after all there had been two big spikes of activity during the morning and afternoon (Red Alerts)

As we started the evening things looked promising, clear skies and the wind dropped to around 17mph from the earlier 38 mph.

We waited and waited but there was no growth, in fact little happened until a  very brief spell around 9.15pm when a band of green showed on the webcam and was reported by a couple of people on Facebook at Shetland Aurora Hunter but nothing reported on Glendale.

From Mossy Hill

I was out but picked up nothing on camera, it would have been weak as it was an 70% full moon so washing out any colour. I stayed out 1.5 hours and didn't pick up anything

From Bigton

Returning home, nothing had showed on the Slackpot (Graph). But again at 22.43 another small band of green showed for about a minute before disappearing again, again nothing showed on Glendale.

St Ninian's Tombolo

At 23 10pm a large green band with rays appeared but looked washed out on the webcams but we moved onto an Orange alert but that faded quick as well. 

Another spike happened after midnight but the moon washed it out