We live in Central Scotland, well, East central Scotland I guess? Is it important? I think that in relation to the sky we look at then, yes, to an extent. If you are looking at my photographs and thinking of Scotland, where we are in relation to Aurora Borealis in the far North, then it gives you some perspective into why we see what we do, right?Whatever, we are lucky that we get to see Aurora quite often. That is driven by the Sun and its activity of course but, there are people further South who may never see or have seen Aurora. That’s probably less true recently given that some of the displays have been seen way down in Cornwall for example but, I hope you get my drift?
I guess the lucky bit for us is a clear view to the North, our windows probably face NNW which means if I put a camera in the window, I’m either getting the Western bit of the display or, I angle the camera to true North to get all of it, then the window frames come into play as well as the distortion and effects of double glazing.
Do you need to know all this? I think some may be interested, at least, I hope so. 🙂
Over-arching all of this is the weather. In recent years we’ve been suffering way more “dreich” days. Those days where there is nothing but cloud, the grey ones, dank, depressing and not good light for photography. At least it’s not raining, as we are prone to saying.
There seem to have been fewer clear days / nights this year so far but, it is only April.
So, back to February. I shared a few star trail shots in the Through January page, I’ve only recently discovered how to create them so we’ll all have to suffer some now 🙂
No Aurora, just star trails for that night but, it also gives me the goal of centring the camera on the Pole star to attempt a full circle shot, for that I believe I need to put the camera outside for the best angle and least distortion. Back to the weather huh?
Today I ordered a weather cover, waterproof and fits snugly around the lens and camera, I may need to ad-lib a little for thermal protection, our temps have been dropping drastically recently and batteries do not like cold and they’d never make it through the night.
The next night was also clear so ….
I labelled that one as shoogly star trails, I obviously had to have a look or tinker with the camera at some point so there’s a glitch in the smooth circular trails 🙂 Must not tinker with the camera!
Jump to February 24th, I don’t remember now if that was the first opportunity weather-wise but it’s highly likely.
Not a great image, it was obviously cloudy that night but I set up and got a shot of Aurora through the clouds. If it’s a good night I make a Time-lapse video of it and I don’t have one for this night, I do have another panorama shot of this night but I just looked at it and it is awful so, no sharing, in fact, deleted.
On the 25th I created a star trails shot or two.
I probably set a camera up outside for a short while, until it got too cold, then or also set one up in the window for the rest of that night
February 26th saw a beautiful clear night, one not to be missed. It’s worth pointing out that we don’t get Aurora every night but, if it’s clear I tend to set up a camera anyway, you never know!!!!!! 😉
When the sky is clear I’m like a hen on a hot griddle, my wee hunny hates it! I’m up and out every ten minutes, just in case. If it looks good or my app tells me there’s a good chance, I’ll take a couple of test shots, the camera sees it before my old eyes.
P.S. I use the 24Hr clock, if you hadn’t noticed 🙂
And so, on to the 28th.
A beauty, in my opinion, really nice green Aurora display along with clean star trails and satellite tracks.
The first image shows how pale the Aurora was as well as the mist hanging over the hills, the second has a vehicle (tractor?) lighting up the hillside and the last shows an object, satellite? that looks like it is falling towards Earth.
Put together into star trails …
A short, early evening display.
March 1st saw the next opportunity.
There are times when those outdoor and house lights really bug me and other times when I consider them a focal area. I just hope that more people don’t move in, build new homes and/or add more lights, I’m seeing more all the time 😦
And so to March 8th before we saw Aurora again.
When I take a full set of time-lapse shots, there can be up to 2,000 images, often driven by battery life but as the nights get lighter, the time available for these will get shorter too. Once I have all the shots on the Mac, I’ll start the process of a quick check before creating the video and then click my way through all of them checking for better shots to keep as a single image or two and for “events” shooting stars, meteorites for ……… who knows? 😉
The next one really took me by surprise. I checked my app which told me there was a good chance of bright, strong activity soon, whizzed outside and took a shot or two!
Just wow! The activity was visible to the naked eye, not as bright as. these shot but clear and moving so, two cameras were used.
The first shot is my usual angle, the centre is a panorama across the entire visible sky and the last is to the WNW, trying to capture as much as possible. I need a wider lens 😉
I currently use a 14mm Viltrox but did own a Nikon 10-20mm which I think I need to invest in again.
This was a really bright show and didn’t last that long, although there was an ongoing glow for most of the night.
I’m going to end this page here, being the first quarter including March; I have a few already in April but, I’m going to keep those until June, see what happens before then.
Thanks for looking, I hope you get to see Aurora yourself, if not, please enjoy mine. 🙂
alyth skies
Scozmo's Photery 