`Steve' returns

For the third time in about a year `Steve' returned to Shetland. On the 7 October 2018 `Steve' was seen over Sandness on the west side during a brief gap in the clouds. The arrival coincided with a Severe Aurora alert and was also see in Orkney

Originally Steve was thought to be a rare Aurora but a recent study claims that in fact it is an unknown Phenomenon which is baffling scientists.

 Although Steve ( Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancer) has been know for about 100 years its only recently that studies have found its nothing to do with the Aurora. Steve can be identified as a ribbon like purple emission during an aurora but slightly south to the Auroral band

In 2016 the Scientific community started to study Steve, originally thought to be a proton arc. Now the study has said it may be a kind of `skyglow' not associated with either the Aurora or airglow. Skyglow is normally associated with light pollution but Steve is structured and distinct.

Steve is massive, stretching east - west for thousands of miles and tens of miles wide north to south, a very impressive and a rare sight in the northern skies

Steve then re appeared in another big storm a few days later, that's the fourth time Steve has been seen in Shetland in the last year.

Aurora not cloud

How wrong can you be, the weather forecasts all indicated a cloudy night, yet in reality it turned out to be a virtually a clear night. This was in the south mainland while the north mainland, Yell and Unst suffered with thick cloud and drizzle.

We headed over to the west side as it became dark just as the Aurora stats started to become better, rising wind speeds and density with the BZ on the down.

The moon had also set earlier in the night so it was very dark just the right condition to see the many millions of stars.

As well as the Milky way green airglow could be seen , something that confuses people as sometimes they think it could be the Aurora, but this was facing south not north.

However looking north the Aurora was bright and around 10.15 it became slightly more active with green pillars moving across the green band. This was only a  KP3 but being so far north it was a good show.

Around 10.45 the cloud started to arrive so we headed home well pleased.

With now well over 1,000 members Shetland Aurora Hunter has grown well since I started the group back in December 2016, just send me a request to join.

I had one of my Aurora photos from the 8 September published in the Shetland Times last week. It was rather a disappointing quality, but this wasn't unexpected as it is always a difficult subject to reproduce.

Recently I have had a couple of Canvas prints done and they have come out well. The Sony A7s only has 12 mp but they managed to produce good prints at 30x20 inches. Metallic paper and Acrylic are other  good options.

I have had numerous questions about processing, some don't like any type of enhancement except sharpening. A lot of Aurora photos for me are too dark so it is important to make sure that the histogram is about 1/4 way from the left, it is worth putting the ISO up to gain a lighter photo which usually shows less noise- noise lives in dark places.