After a CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) event from our Sun this weekend I've noticed a lot of news articles hinting at the northern lights potentially being visible much further south than usual.
While I wait for space weather predictions such as: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/specialist-forecasts/space-weather to look favourable, I thought I'd share the photos I took from the last solar storm back in May of this year.
With photography being in the right place at the right time is very important, and while it mostly comes down to luck, you can help your chances by being prepared.
Thanks to the community on https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/ I knew hours in advance that the solar storm on its way to earth was going to cause a light show because of how unusually excited they were getting. So I was able to get my camera fully charged and scout out a spot with low light pollution.
Admittedly I was a little too prepared...
I set up my camera and tripod at 9pm and it was only after 10pm that the aurora started showing bright enough to get some shots.
It remained like this for about an hour and I was very excited. This was the brightest I had ever seen it in the UK and it covered much more of the sky than I was expecting.
Then very suddenly at 11:20pm it started getting brighter and brighter. This was the first time I had ever seen it bright enough to be visible with the naked eye in the UK, and the first time I have ever seen multiple colours at once.
It continued to get brighter and brighter even being clearly visible with the naked eye. I've seen the northern lights before in Alaska but this is the first time I could make out colours just with my eyes.
My favourite moment of the night was the realisation that it wasn't just on the northern horizon like you would expect from being in the south of the UK, but when I looked up I realised it was directly above me!
Also a first for me was bright white aurora. To give you an idea of how bright the light was, the longest exposure shot I took was 6 seconds. Some of them only needed 2.5!
In the past sightings usually lasted 20 to 30 minutes. This night lasted literally hours. The aurora started being visible around 11pm. At 00:30 the sky exploded in colour, and after I had gone to bed and woke up at 3am due to yet another aurora alert on my phone, this is the picture I got with my smartphone camera.
What a night!
All photos are taken by me on my FZ1000, with the exception of the last picture on a Oneplus 8.
