Friday 26 August 2016

G1 Geomagnetic Storm - 24th August

big-storm-bhs
I spent the evening of the 23rd of August watching online aurora monitoring stations and could see a huge auroral oval straight over Iceland where we are staying.  Late in august though there is only still a few hours of darkness so I decided to get a few hours sleep and then get up around midnight.  Initially I thought there was no aurora to be seen as the northern sky was empty apart from stars, but as I turned around to the south I could see the northern lights stretching brightly across from the east to the west but in the southerly sky as the auroral oval was so far south.  This time lapse represents 3 frames a minute and spans two and a half hours, it was taken from the West Fjords of Iceland, with the lights in the shot being the ferry port at Brjanslaekur.  Taken with the Canon 350D, Sigma 10mm f4 lens, iso800 and 15 seconds exposure.  You can see at the height of it the entire landscape lights up green when it was easily bright enough to cast shadows.  Throughout the aurora can be seen reflecting o the sea on the left of the image.  It's taken me several years of solar imaging to master the craft of animations, but seem to be able to now, so, might have to go back and look at some of the data I have from previous Iceland visits.  Fingers crossed for more clear skies for the rest of my holiday and more auroras!