Shetland Aurora Hunter

I have just started a new facebook group page ' Shetland Aurora Hunter' please send me a request to join. The aim is to provide a place to share experiences and photographs on the Aurora, Milky Way, Stars, Meteorites, Comets etc.

The weather has not really provided many opportunities to get out to see the Aurora with cloud, rain and two Hurricanes. Geomagnetic storm conditions for several days produced good Aurora conditions from just before Christmas but as usual the weather didn't clear up

A week or so ago i gave a talk on the Shetland Night Sky which raised a good number of questions and i hope may provide some inspiration to get out on a clear night to see the stars and aurora. The Night Sky Photography course at Islesburgh in April is now full , details are due to be sent out in the next couple of weeks

At last a clear but very cold night on New Years eve and before the Scottish festivities started we headed out.  The wind was quiet strong and coming head on from the North. A KP5 was predicted but as ever the cloud made its presence felt and soon closed in

Despite getting well wrapped up it was still very cold. The Christmas lights on houses in Bigton produced even more light pollution

 Last night the aurora prediction was good and with an increasing  solar wind speed we set off to Bigton with the stars out

 Just as we arrived the clouds came in the wind picked up and it started sleeting

As we headed back we found the roads over to Sandwick covered in snow and the roads began to freeze, so i am glad we came back earlier as it could have been tricky getting over this hill road. One thing you always have to bear in mind when going Aurora hunting. Other people said later it was not as strong as was forecast

Earlier last night, the Moon and Venus looked superb

More photos at http://www.amazingshetland.co.uk

Good show

On Tuesday the conditions for seeing the aurora seemed good, a reasonably clear night, fairly calm for Shetland and last quarter  visible moon. The only thing it was cold, very cold. So i wrapped up, two pairs of socks, tea-shirt, shirt, two jumpers, body warmer and thick coat, hat and gloves.

                                                                                    Just a faint green glow at first

 As ice was expected we went over to Bigton early and the journey was not too bad at 7.30 pm. The aurora was already showing on Shetland cliff cam 3, a bright green glow and it was estimated to be a KP5 tonight so things looked promising.

We were soon in position and the aurora was already visible before our eyes adjusted to the dark. A green band arched over Bigton and Ireland and grew in colour as the evening progressed

The aurora started to show a pink, then red colour with some purple as well, it was becoming a great show, even though it was very, very cold.

About 9 pm a car pulled up and two people got out and started to talk loudly in Russian, perhaps they didn't see me standing about 30 yards away. Now had we been invaded tonight ? Russian bombers had to be escorted away from Shetland airspace and a fleet of Russian warships came very close to Shetland waters recently.

                                                                                              Very active for a while

They may have become excited by the aurora and forgot to turn their car lights off . Then one person decided to get a tripod out and tried to hold it with the camera on, rather than setting it up properly.

Cloud rolled in about  9.30 pm and it started to rain a bit so we set off back and found the road from Bigton back to the A970 very icy.

Getting back home we checked the internet to find out the further south it had become even more active after 9.35 pm

Still time to purchase a canvas from www.amazingshetland.co.uk in time for Christmas

Moon washed aurora

At last a break in the cloud and rain free night with only a Force 3 wind. That's good for Shetland so we headed out  last night knowing that the Aurora forecast was around a KP5

                                                                                                 St Ninian's Tombolo

We arrived at a reasonably dark site, well normally until you take into account a near full moon that was brightening all the landscape. Tomorrow it will be a Super Moon (although looking at the weather for tomorrow it looks like rain so i doubt whether we will see it in Shetland

                                                                           A pillar of light, game on !

While the moon provided good detail in the landscape it was washing out any aurora that might appear in the sky, except i could just make out a pillar of light.

To show how bright it was on the night i was using ISO 500 15 seconds at F/3.2, unlike the last time we went out and I was having to use ISO 3200 together with some light painting

The pillar of colour did expand for a minute or so then faded away. This is typical aurora activity, some bursts of activity are very short while others last hours.

With several dark sites only around 15 mins away we are well placed to get there fast.

Still looking for that mind blowing aurora but i am sure it will come soon, however any aurora nights are worth seeing , hopefully getting some photos as well

Looking south from Bigton is St Ninian's tombolo, this looks good in the day and at night

Just an update, the Night Sky course i am running on 11 April 2017 for Shetland Adult Education is now full and the Intermediate Photography Course which includes a session on Astrophotography starting at the end of February 2017 is also full.

You still have time to buy a canvas for Christmas, see full details at www.amazingshetland.co.uk

Aurora captured

While people have been watching the aurora for many thousands of years its only recently that we have been able to capture the aurora on camera

Often without the aid of the camera we could miss a weak aurora, the camera sensor is far more sensitive than our eyes. You have to go back to 1892 to when the first aurora photograph was taken which showed some structure, this was taken by  two Germans,  Otto Beschin & Martin Brendel using a highly sensitive plate and a wet process.

Before this Robert Esther tried back in 1885 when he achieved a blurry aurora photograph with an eight and a half min exposure which blurred out the aurora and was never published. Today with advanced digital DSLR cameras we can take exposures of a few seconds which show some great detail.

Long before cameras came along people felt a strong need to capture the aurora in some way to show others, some would turn to art, others tried to describe it in words but now many people try and capture it digitally.

As i have said before its on most people's bucket list and i have spoken to a number of visitors to Shetland who have come up in winter to catch a glimpse or better still a photograph of the Merrie Dancers as it is call here.

Green is the main colour that we see but on some occasions when there is a big storm other colours are evident such as Red and Purple although the latter is less frequently seen. The Red colour is often seen at about 120 miles up with the Green colour lower at 90 miles high and Blue and Magenta at 60 miles high.

I was glad to be out Monday night as this was the only night to have clear skies all this week, the wind was not too strong either but with a major aurora at KP6 on a couple of nights later in the week I was very disappointed to find that it was total cloud cover, heavy rain and up to gale force 8 so no chance of even seeing the aurora.

The milky way was spectacular as well. with no light pollution from the moon many thousands of stars could be seen

see more photos at www.amazingshetland.co.uk