I got an email from Chris showing pictures of some amazing northern lights taken only a few miles form home. I was pissed!!!! I have signed up to about 4 websites that are suppose to email you when there should be some activity in the atmosphere, and I had received nothing! It has always been one of my life ambitions to see the aurora borealis, and to be able to see it so close to home was too good to miss. I spent the next hour or so going to all the forecast sites I know and it was forecasted for more activity that evening and the sky was suppose to be clear.

I arranged with Chris Fryer to go to Clachnaben that night,  a local hill that I thought should be clear enough of Aberdeen’s light pollution.  We set off around 10pm with our cameras and loads of warm clothing. We got to the top after about and hour and to amuse ourselves we took pictures of star trails etc. We both excitedly scanned the sky pretty frequently. After about two hours of being up there I looked up and the cloud was doing strange things. I looked again and it was not cloud!!!!!! It was the northern lights!!!!!!! Not the bright greens you normally see, but more greyish green.

I was mid way taking a star trail, so the camera was quickly snatched from that and I tried to take a picture of it – not the most succesful attempt but you can get an idea.  The lights danced and flickered above our selves as chris andIi watched, was very cool indeed.  It wasn’t a massive show but it was still amazing to see and wetted the appetite for more!

After it disappeared back to star trails.  The pic above chris was very decent and decided to walk down the path with his head torch on…….  again you can see some green in it ( aurora borealis), this was not visible to the human eye, the shutter speed here is about 7 minutes. 

We then sat down for a bit in sleeping bags for warmth and watched the sky hoping for more, it started to cloud over and at 2:30am we called it a night and wondered down back to the cars – home – and bed by 4.  Was a long day at work the next day!