Windy Aurora

The weather forecast for last night was for around 50% cloud so we took a risk and headed over to Bigton

It's wasn't good as rain set in, but five mins later it had stopped. I stepped out into a windy night around Force 4-5 so not really a good night for photography doing long exposures. The photo above just shows how the wind distorts the stars and makes them into teardrops

Stars started to show and I wasn't going to miss out 

Looking north it was virtually full cloud but it did start to clear and a bright satellite appeared

With the cloud clearing for 5 mins a green patch of the Aurora showed. It wasn't even showing any alert , below a KP2 if that's what you use to determine the strength

    

Below the Aurora and to the left, two bright orange lights of Oil rigs may be about 50 miles away.

So an Aurora tick, better than nothing but again it was just good to be under the stars. I had missed out on the stronger Auroras of the past few nights due to black ice everywhere, so any green is a good green (only visible to camera

Fireball

A clear sky and a forecast of a KP5 aurora with only a slight wind, it was looking good except the moon was nearly full and causing a lot of light pollution

I set up anyway and it wasn't long before i caught this fireball over Bigton, on the west side of Shetland, one of those events I will treasure for along time

This may be a random fireball, a rock from the asteroid belt as no meteorite shower was due, the next major one the Leonid in November. The only September meteor shower is the Aurigids shower, which is debris from the Comet Kiess, but this is a periodic event.

Fireballs are very bright meteors, with a magnitude over -4, this one must have been very bright considering the strength of moon. The frequency of Fireballs increase by 10-30% during the weeks of the vernal equinox

 Anyway back to the aurora, i could just see a very faint aurora about 10.30pm and the camera sensor confirmed this

 The moonlight was highlighting the foreground but washing out the green of the aurora

Its still good to get out any night and you have to make do with the weather conditions, even St Ninian's tombolo looked great in the moonlight. I felt sorry for those in the caravans as none of the people had come out to see the night sky

                                                                   A faint glow on the horizon still worth seeing

                                                                  The glow of the moon just over the horizon

 Apparently after 1.30am the aurora grew stronger and gave a good show. Tonight the cloud has come in and its looking doubtful whether we will see the aurora even though the forecast is good.

For more Shetland photos please visit my website at www.amazingshetland.co.uk