Aurora Attempt No. 6 (further images added)

[David Paterson]

Ever since we all saw and photographed a wonderful aurora in Lofoten, 4 years ago, I've been determined to shoot a "Scottish" aurora. I signed up for an "aurora alert" service which let me down twice by not giving an alert until the aurora was nearly finished; on other occasions of strong indications, it was cloudy in Scotland.

Finally, tonight, I got something - not in the same league as we had in Lofoten, but something, just the same. To the naked eye it was very faint, but just visible; but the camera, as usual, does a superb job of light-gathering. I haven't actually checked the metadata but it was something like 8 secs at f4, 1000iso, 28/f2 AIS (on D600).

[Fons Baerken]

Great effort

[Hugh_3170]

Well worth the wait Dave.  It reminds me of the Scottish song " The Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen".

[elsa hoffmann]

Glad your patience paid off.
I like the different colours - and hope you get many more opportunities

[John Geerts]

Impressive color-pattern.

[Jørgen Ramskov]

Cool! Wonderful colors.

And yes, we were treated with amazing amounts of auroras while in Lofoten.

[David Paterson]

Thanks to everyone for the kind comments. What I forgot to say is that the photographs were shot from our own garden - not the best aurora-viewing location, but I didn't want to miss anything by taking time to drive somewhere else. I haven't processed everything yet, but here is another image -

[Mikes]

A couple of great catches - I do like the composition and colours in #2.

[Tersn]

Good shots. Tonight I will make an effort here in Oslo too. With some luck, som auroras should be visible.

[David Paterson]

Thanks, Mike and Terje. It's tempting to brighten the images more, but then you lose the brilliance of the stars against the dark sky; compromises, compromises.   

[ColinM]

Looks lovely Dave.
And what a bonus to see it from your own garden

[Bjørn J]

Lucky you! The first one is great, with the purple colour and the pillars.
It has been cloudy a long time here, so I haven't seen much auroras so far. Another problem is that the sky is still a bit bright at night here north of the Arctic Circle. It will be better
I hope to try the D810A for auroras this season. The increased sensitivity for deep red (and much less noise) could be perfect for the northern lights.

[Peter Connan]

Beautiful David!

[David Paterson]

Lucky you! The first one is great, with the purple colour and the pillars.
It has been cloudy a long time here, so I haven't seen much auroras so far. Another problem is that the sky is still a bit bright at night here north of the Arctic Circle. It will be better
I hope to try the D810A for auroras this season. The increased sensitivity for deep red (and much less noise) could be perfect for the northern lights.

Thanks, Colin, Bjørn and Peter.

Bjørn - it has been very cloudy here for months but suddenly we are enjoying an Indian summer with warm sunshine and - very important - clear skies. Here also the sky is not getting properly dark until after midnight, and this display was finished well before then. I shot these with the D600 which is much better at high ISO than my D800, but still noisy. Also, I am a novice at processing aurora files and am just learning as I go along. I've already learned a few things and am going back to the raw files to try again.

[simato73]

The first was a good display, I still have to see a purple aurora, only seen the green so far.
Last winter I went to the Cairngorms during a long weekend hoping to see some, needless to say the sky was covered in deep cloud the whole time.
How long/dark can we expect the nights to be early in May?