I’ve had aurora apps on my phone for a number of years, particularly for those visits to the Highlands on holiday, but with very limited success of combining the ‘being in the right place at the right time’!

Now having moved here, there is increased optimism that opportunities would arise to capture some of those occasions when the northern lights were on display and visible from the north of Scotland.

This particular weekend turned out to be one of those opportunities. I saw on the app a predicted Kp Index 7 for late on the Saturday night and as the evening progressed I kept an eye on the ‘aurora map’ and could see the visible aurora was over north Sweden - similar to the screenshot below (taken the night after):

What I was not expecting was a change in the next 90 minutes where the green area of the aurora moved west and then the centre became yellow and red with the green border reaching down to Scotland. Exactly as shown below following night!

I headed outside the house with the camera and tripod to see whether there was any evidence of the aurora and could just make out some colour on the horizon (visible on the bottom of the image below, taken from our driveway):

I realised at that point, that as much as our current location is great for views in many directions, I was going to need to find somewhere with more elevation to have the best chance of seeing what was to come. I therefore headed off in the car to the ridge of a hill that I’m familiar with (about 28 minutes drive) wondering what I was going to see!

On arriving at the car park I saw some torches flickering above me where the ridge rises to the highest point and thought I may not be the only photographer crazy enough so late in the night to be out there with my camera! It turned out to be a couple who were simply there to view the aurora as well, and seemed as excited as I was with what followed.

Seeing some brightness on the NNW horizon I pointed the camera in the rough direction on 30s exposure and 3200ISO to see what was happening and got the photo below! I was well chuffed!

The remaining time was spent getting a variety of photos of the best viewing I’ve had so far of an aurora.

It was a little disappointing that clouds were soon to move in and partially obscure the view, but still permitting some lovely records of the event

Eventually the cloud obstruction (along with the late hour of the night) resulted in a decision to head back home. On arriving home however, the skies were clear at our location, with the horizon ‘aurora brightness’ still visible to the naked eye. So out came the camera again capturing the aurora activity from a different perspective (select the thumbnails to see the larger version):

The experience was definitely worth sacrificing a bit of sleep for, but then discovered in the morning that I had benefitted from the clocks going back that night! Fortuitous, as I had completely forgotten!

Footnote: The following night there was a similar predicted Kp Index and the aurora app was showing the same level of aurora as shown in the screenshot earlier in the blog. However the weather over the Highlands was as below - heavy rain, emphasising the privilege to have had the weather so compliant the night before!

UPDATE

After what I considered a fantastic experience at the weekend seeing the aurora we were set to have another special encounter later that week.

On the Wednesday the following week just before heading off to bed, I happened to notice that my phone had some notifications I missed from my aurora apps indicating a red alert with the aurora being visible in the UK. I had missed the notifications by about 30 minutes but rushed outside of the house with the camera to a partially cloudy sky to see whether the camera would pick up anything - the result was the shot below:

It was obvious that there was some serious aurora activity on the horizon - with the cloud getting in the way! The above photo was looking north. So I moved the camera over to the north-north-west direction where the sky was much clearer and was stunned by what I saw.

I’ve never seen the aurora in real life like this - only on photos, such as when my son went to Iceland. It was amazing to behold. What was incredible as well, was that you could clearly see the ‘fingers’ of light with the naked eye (just not the colours that the camera picked up).

It didn’t seem to be too long before the cloud on the horizon moved closer obscuring the light show, leaving me with one of the final photos below: