A panorama that stretched either side of the Northern horizon on 10th May 24. The moon was still out with a bit of light pollution too at the horizon. You can see the sheer number of people (well cars) out to watch the spectacle.
It is not uncommon for people to make a trip to the arctic to watch the Aurora Borealis i.e. the Northern lights. Heck even I spent a small fortune on this bucket list item (that's the story for another blog post).
Thus far in 2024, as you may have read in the news we had quite a significant amount of solar activity. So much so that we had the aurora visible all over the UK and even in cities with all the light pollution!
My aurora hunting in the UK starts here...
I popped out on Friday, 10th May evening to the closest least polluted, least cloud covered dark sky I could find at short notice. I was hoping for a faint display of Aurora on the North horizon if lucky... But what we got was a display and then some... in all directions(!) including my back garden (where my wife watched it from)
It was supposedly even visible via. the phone/camera even in parts of London even through the light pollution!
I popped out on Friday, 10th May evening to the closest least polluted, least cloud covered dark sky I could find at short notice. I was hoping for a faint display of Aurora on the North horizon if lucky... But what we got was a display and then some... in all directions(!) including my back garden (where my wife watched it from)
It was supposedly even visible via. the phone/camera even in parts of London even through the light pollution!
Looking East...
Looking west...
Looking straight up
I was simply lining up shots to the North initially. I soon realised it was all around me. I couldn't just believe it, for a moment I felt I had teleported to the Arctic!
And the cherry on top was I could see colours that I didn’t even see while I visited the Arctic.
Since the above event I have kept a close eye on the solar activity. I really wanted to photograph at a location I had in mind for a while. Aurora with a telescope, how fitting...
In August there was small bursts of activity, and while not anywhere near the levels of the May event, I managed to get a half-decent result with the camera. The aurora wasn't visible to the eyes but I was impressed the camera picked up as much details (i.e. "waves") as it did in the aurora. This outing gave a me a good baseline for the amount of activity to look out for in the UK (especially down south).
Fast forward to Thursday, 10th October where we saw the second major sun storm of the year. While not at the same levels as 10th May, its on a similar scale. The colours were once again visible to the eyes. We could once again watch the aurora from our house down south in the UK which is quite a novelty in itself.
Take that Norway!
The colours that came out was different, the greens and reds were most prominent this time. The aurora was also visible looking in most directions too which is another indication of how high the solar activity had shot up.
Looking West....
Pointed North
Looking East...
While its been great hunting auroras, the hunt is not over yet... I still have the "reflection shot" I really want to capture. I need to find a good place or two for that. In the UK you always need a backup because of the weather. I've a couple in mind to do some recce on. Fingers crossed for another one of these amazing nights while we are still in the solar maximum period and toes crossed for no clouds and that too in the UK!
A 5 shots pano with the big dipper showing clearly on the left. It was a sight to and a half with the Aurora. While I did manage to capture all this with in a single shot with a 16mm ultra-wide angle lens, stitching a pano with 35mm lens made the Big Dipper more prominent in the frame.