ASTRO DOG'S CELESTIAL ADVENTURE: LAST NIGHT'S / THIS MORNINGS AMAZING AURORA DISPLAY CAPTURED IN MEMORY OF NICOLES UNCLE GREG - 07-08/10/2024
What an amazing evening last night was!
After giving the heads up about a possible aurora display we packed all our gear and headed out to see if we could catch the aurora.
While Nicole isn't well at the moment, she was determined to try and capture the aurora in memory of her uncle Greg who recently passed away. Nicoles earliest memories of stargazing was with her uncle Greg as well as her late uncle Andrew who passed away this time several years ago, so it felt like a lovely and very fitting tribute.
We initially quickly headed up to a fairly light polluted area to try and capture a special photograph for her uncle Greg. However although you could see a hint of the green glow from the aurora it wasn’t the best of views so we decided to head elsewhere. Whilst we were there, we also met a few people who had come out to see if they could see the aurora because of our earlier heads up. It was lovely to meet them and chat briefly.
When we arrived at our second destination the aurora had become quite a bit stronger and was much easier to see. There was a strong green glow on the horizon, in fact the glow was so strong that it was visible to the naked eye!
We quickly set up our camera gear and started snapping away. While there was a fair amount of cloud there was some amazing colours and structure visible in the images we were capturing. There was a super strong green glow with very active rays that were dancing side to side and a red/pink glow above the clouds. As the night progressed, there was a burst of intense activity with some extremely bright red aurora and rays that were visible to the North-East out across the sea.
After a short period of intense activity, the aurora died down a little but continued to display a strong green glow. It was at this point the clouds began to engulf the skies and the aurora was hidden from view.
We decided to head to one more location to see if we could find any gaps in the clouds. Unfortunately the clouds were completely covering the skies at this point and the weather radar didn’t look promising so we decided to head home.
Later in the night there was some clearings in the clouds so we set up one of our cameras to shoot out of our attic window. Although the aurora was still active and visible through the gaps, the cloud was obscuring most of the display and the aurora was not quite as intense as earlier. We decided to leave our camera shooting out of the window until the onset of heavy rain concluded the night.
Although the cloud did get in the way a little, we had a lovely evening and managed to capture many images including quite a few during the moments of intense activity. We will look through them all when we have some time to. For now, we would like to share with you one of the images we captured. An image which we will dedicate to Nicoles Uncle Greg. We hope you like it! 💖