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Aurora borealis - December 2003 |
Click on the images to get the full size image.
We had really good aurorae in the Isle of Man during December. I took several
shots from behind my house, and then went to the Calf Sound (which is
very dark at night). It was a moonless night, and the aurora lit the
sky up well enough that I could see my way around whilst setting up the
camera at the Calf sound. (Good job too, there are some cliffs to fall
off). The aurora lasted several hours, from about 6:30pm until around
10pm and were obvious even in areas saturated by streelighting.
I had seen pictures of the aurora in encyclopaedias and text books, and
the photographs always showed a small red area in the sky and the rest
dark. The real thing turned out to be much better - at its peak the
entire sky was covered in red and green light. Looking directly up,
you could see a sort of 'point of origin'. The lights shifted over time.
I didn't expect the photographs to come out at all, and was very pleasantly
surprised at the results - better than the pictures in the newspaper, even
if I say so myself.
Note the thumbnails are a lot grainier than the full size (artifacts of
gd resizing them, I suppose).
