Consecutive Aurora nights in Shetland

We have just seen 6 consecutive days of Aurora activity in Shetland although the first few days viewing was very difficult with very strong winds and heavy rain

Things started to improve on the fourth day but the aurora was fairly weak but still worth seeing.

I really relish getting out under any night sky especially when the Aurora is due. You have to watch the stats to have any clue what is going on, or check on Shetland Aurora Hunter for actual aurora sightings.

The problem with some apps is that on occasions they are way out with predictions, for instance on one of the nights it was not showing any activity so to speak, just a KP1 but the Aurora in Shetland was quiet bright , more like a KP3

This has happened many times before, last year one night I went down to Sumburgh to photograph the milky way as no Aurora had been predicted but I was soon picking up green on camera. As I made my way back to the car I could see the Aurora by eye, again two of the apps I have showed no activity.

More and more colour showed with high rays, a great display but few had been out and seen anything judging by the lack of photos the next day. The opposite can happen as well and most people have been caught out when a large aurora was due only to find nothing showing.

After all these are just predications it best just to go out as much as possible and experience the night yourself.

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.