Aurora

This has been a good year for auroras but until last night I had never seen one.  There were two very strong showings earlier in the year but on both occasions I was away from home without the right camera or access to dark(ish) sky.  Some of the others have come and gone very quickly in the early hours and I only found out next morning, and anyway it was usually cloudy.  I had identified a field just across the road as a possible site with a view north and when the app alert showed red last night, and the sky was clear, I went across to try to get a photo.

It wasn't dramatic to the naked eye but I could see green and red lights in the sky to the north. This is roughly what it looked like to me (with a plane flying across).

And this is how the camera saw it.

As I watched the colour spread to the west.

And the red developed on the western side.

I was using a 24-70mm lens at 24mm but ideally I would have had a wider angle.  As the red intensified I tried a series of photos for a vertical panorama but the vignetting and the lack of reference points mean Adobe Lightroom can't stitch a panorama.  So here are the upper and lower photos I would have used.

Things changed quite quickly and the red began to fade.

By the time I left the sky looked like this (to the camera).

It looks from the activity plot as though the aurora was brighter again after 2am but I was fast asleep by then.  I have a few ideas how I might improve next time, perhaps using portrait aspect to make a horizontal panorama.  Otherwise I'll need a wide-angle lens.