FenlandPaul

Super pic, Rustang. Love the way you've brought out Barnard's Loop and the California nebula and a great composition.

Those are super, Dave. The reflections are stunning!!

That really is a beautiful image. Amazing to capture from mainland U.K.!!

That’s super interesting. How does this compare to other big displays you’ve had there? Sounds like it was a cracker last night, with the arc visible by eye from Norfolk and decent beams on camera.

Very nice, Paul. I love it when the Plough arches around something!

Thank you, Mick - appreciated! Thanks Paul. I don’t blame you - wet and cold feet before bed? No thanks!!

Wowsers!! 🤩 They look like SOME skies! Great images.

That’s a fantastic capture - fascinating. There’s something about watching an occultation that really puts you in touch with the colossal scale of the universe!

Earlier on the same evening that I shot The Beauty of Her Dance, we scouted out a fast-running stream that has a few nice cascades and pools in it as it neared the fjord. It was only a short walk from the roadside and we hoped to carve out some pleasing compositions, even at the risk of slipping on the treacherous rocks and getting a soaking. It was a little more challenging than I'd expected because getting out over the water wasn't as easy as it looked during the day, and the shot upstream seemed to coincide with a complete absence of aurora in that direction. Esther, wisely sitting watching me from the top of the bank, well out of harm's way, started to notice the aurora was really picking up in the opposite direction. This, I thought, was no good to me because the road crossed the stream not far down the hill, and I assumed the bridge would ruin the foreground. But when I took some test shots, the bridge was barely noticeable, the aurora was streaming nicely in the same direction as a tree that overhung the stream, as well as lighting up the landscape. Really sorry if you're getting a bit bored with these images - only a few more to share!! 😊

Very happy to take commissions, Paul. 🤣 Yes, it’s one of the more special pictures for me - some lovely memories caught up in it.

Water and aurora mix really well. I was after as many water-based scenes as I could find in Senja, but I also wanted to create some images that spoke to the special time my wife and I were having on this unexpected break together. One night we combined the two just a few minutes drive from the cabin in which we were staying. We noticed this fishing jetty earlier in the day, alongside which was a lovely open hut, stacked with firewood, which was open to the public to come and enjoy a nice meal cooked over an open fire. The aurora was kicking off nicely and so after capturing the scene I wanted with my wife in the frame, we indulged in a selfie. The first image I called “The Beauty of her Dance”. Shot on a Canon 6D with Samyang 14mm f/2.8, foreground a 30s exposure at ISO3200 and f/4, and sky 6s at ISO6400 and f/2.8. Edited and blended in LR and PS. Same settings for the second “selfie” image, which I haven’t named. Enjoy!

We were underneath the same event. It was absolutely insane - sky pulsating with vivid colours for around 15 minutes. Lit up the landscape. Will remember it for ever. 🤩

After the insane substorm in AstroLandscapes #44 had died down, we drove to another location we’d scouted earlier in the day, atop the high pass on the way to the little fishing-village-on-an-island of Husøy. This overlooked one of the fjords and had a stunning mountain backdrop. Compared to the earlier madness, the auroral patterns for the rest of the night were much more subtle, with beautiful colours on camera and some elegant dancing pillars, but none of the look-at-me shoutiness of earlier on the night. Yet it remained mesmerising; it was, in fact, exactly all I’d dared to expect coming here in the first place. The various compositions I’d planned over the mountains generally didn’t work out, as the auroral arcs never lined up in the way I’d hoped. But I loved the way these fluttering pillars seemed to mimic the horizon line and the lovely defined colours in this picture, which I’ve called “The High Road”. It was taken with a Canon 6D and a Samyang 14mm f/2.8 lens. The foreground was a 30s exposure at f/4 and ISO3200. The sky was a 3.2s exposure at ISO6400 and f/2.8, edited and blended in LR and PS.

The best I can describe it is like bright inner city light pollution on a hazy night. The landscape went from pitch black to very clearly illuminated, albeit we were very well dark adapted. Much nicer than light pollution though!

It’s well worth the trip, Paul. Obviously no guarantees of outbursts, but being directly under the auroral oval you at least get something every night it’s clear. ha! We’ve got some decisions to make re which we print and hang! Yes they were in portrait orientation. I tend to use a huge overlap with the 14mm because the lens profile can often make panos suffer from dark streaks towards the edge of each frame.’so these were overlapped by around 75%.

While I was shooting the serene scene in Light and Tranquility, my wife started to get excited about a distinct brightening and more rapid movement to the south. Arcs of pulsating and flickering pillars were starting to form, and greens were turning to pinks more frequently, even to the eye. The whole sky was starting to take on a distinct glow, with different hues appearing and dissipating with increasing frequency. I rushed to move the car out of the way in order to set up an alternative foreground for a timelapse. My heart was racing. As I moved it forward I heard a horrendous noise from underneath. Immediately I realised I'd run over my camera bag, which I'd stupidly left in front of the car earlier. Words were uttered. Bad words. It was completely wedged under the floor pans - I had no choice but to keep moving forward to dislodge it, and just hope any damage was limited. Incredibly, thought the bag took a battering, including the thick metal rods encasing the main compartment, the contents were completely unscathed. It pays to keep your head when the sky is kicking off - I didn't, but thankfully no serious harm done. By now the sky was ablaze and this substorm (which I believe may have been an incoming CME) was in full swing. There were curtains, arcs, flickering pillars, beautiful complex coronoas forming and disappearing overhead, and colours like I've never seen in my life. It's hard to describe - at times, the mixture of colours in the sky made it look heavily light polluted, but then the colours would separate and it would look truly magical. I knew this was my chance to get the shot of a lifetime and that these conditions were not likely to last long. I climbed back down to the side of the stream and opted for a pano with the 14mm, so as to catch as much of the colour in the sky as possible. The images on the back of the camera were utterly surreal, and I was already looking forward to getting them home on the computer to really see the colours. Shot with a Canon 6D and Samyang 14mm f/2.8 lens. Foreground is single row, 7-shot pano, 30s exposure at ISO3200 and f/4. Sky was 9 shots of 2.5s each at ISO6400 and f/2.8. Foreground and sky panos stitched separately in Lightroom and then blended in Photoshop. I've called this image "The Many Colours of Heaven". The 10 minutes or so that this substorm was in full swing were breathtaking - I honestly never knew the sky could be so dynamic and almost violent in its colour. I still get goosebumps thinking about it 6 days on. It seems we were in Senja during a particularly heightened period of activity, and this substorm seemed to amaze even very seasoned aurora obervers; just so pleased we were in the right place at the right time. Hope you enjoy.

Thanks Paul. Absence of artificial light wasn’t actually that easy to track down in our part of Senja! Amazing how car headlights could pop up where you least expect it!

On our third night in Senja, we'd scouted a couple of locations during the day. We noticed this pretty stream some way from one of the mountain passes we'd crossed on the way to the quaint little island fishing village of Husoy. We managed to find a rutted track that we could just about get the car up that took us to a nice meander in the stream near a locked-up hut and we decided to come back that evening. As soon as we arrived there were some lovely arcs of aurora in the sky. My wife set up her chair and started to sit back and watch the show, while I headed to the bank of the stream to shoot my first set of images looking north. I loved how quiet everything was and these tall, graceful pillars danced gently and silently high above our heads, and for a fleeting moment the arc of the aurora seemed to mirror the sides of the valley. Little did I know what was about to happen, but more on that in AstroLandscapes #44!! This image was with a Canon 6D with a 14mm f/2.8 lens. The sky was a 4s exposure at ISO6400 and f/2.8. Foreground was 30s exposure at ISO3200 and f/4. Edited in Lightroom and blended in Photoshop.

Thanks for your encouragement as always, Paul. 😊

I love these, Mike. Especially the smoothed sea from the long exposure. Very naturally processed too. 👍

Like many people, I have for a long time harboured a dream to see the northern lights “properly”. For me, this dream was kindled by a kindly man called Ron Livesey, who used to be the Aurora and NLC Section lead for the BAA. In my early teens, after my folks moved to the north east of England, I would exchange letters with him about how to see the northern lights and NLC; at the time I had no joy with the former, but I had some success with the latter, even when they weren’t such a well observed phenomenon. About a year ago, I decided I needed to do something about the repeated “I’d love to see them properly one day” response I’d give when people asked if I’d ever seen the lights. Having got into landscape astrophotography in 2020, it seemed logical that I’d plan a trip to capture images of the aurora as well as see them with the naked eye. Research of locations had me examine Alaska (too far), Iceland (too high a risk of cloud) and the far north of Norway (possibly just right). I settled on Senja island, off the north west coast of Norway, within the Arctic Circle and fairly accessible from the UK. Timing was dictated principally by work commitments, with the snowy (and bitter) February-March time being too busy for me to take the time off easily; hence I settled on October, which was slightly riskier in terms of typical cloud cover, but I was prepared to drive some considerable distance if needed to seek out clear skies. A week before my trip, the whole affair was thrown into some jeopardy when my best mate and travel partner contracted covid and seemed to be suffering; thankfully (and selfishly) I hadn’t met him a couple of days before for a planning session! We decided to leave it to the last minute to see how he was, and on the Friday before the Saturday of our flights, he called to properly pull out as his whole family had now gone down. I started to readjust to the idea of going solo, but it was likely some of the more extreme mountain-top shooting locations were now off-limits - I’m a competent hiker, but it wouldn’t be fair on my family to head into unfamiliar wilderness alone at night! But then in a flash of inspiration my wife suggested she might be able to come instead. I looked blankly at her, failing completely to comprehend why she’d want to tag along on an essentially nocturnal “holiday”, with only a peripheral interest in the night sky, no suitable clothing and only very basic accommodation booked. And besides, with two school-age kids I just didn’t see logistically how it would work. An hour later, she’d convinced her parents to drive over from the other side of the country that same day and look after the kids for the week, we’d navigated the needlessly complex process of switching passenger names, and we were looking forward to a completely unexpected trip together. So after a sleepless-through-excitement night, we woke early to head to Heathrow and took our two flights to Tromso. Arriving just as dusk was falling, we picked up our hire car, remortgaged to do a sparse-but-adequate supermarket shop, and started the 3 hour drive to Senja island. About 20 minutes before we arrived, once it was properly dark and coinciding with delirium, we began to notice what seemed like long, moonlit streaks of cloud in the sky, initially barely perceptible but then very clearly. Trying to keep my eyes on the road, we could see the streaks were forming wavy ribbons in places. Pressing on to the cabin we’d booked, which, it turned out, was very tucked away down a dirt track and not easily found at night, the final few minutes of the drive were pregnant with the expectation of what we’d see once we stepped out of the car. Ribbons and curtains of a strong milky light - much more obvious than the Milky Way from a dark location - seemed to wave subtley as if on a gentle breeze. We threw the bags out of the car and into the cabin, quickly made the beds and then in an instant we were outside on the wooden terrace outside the cabin. As our eyes adjusted and we looked up, a swirl of activity was taking place right overhead and, within seconds, we saw our first auroral corona - an incredible introduction to visual auroral observing! My wife’s description of the corona was very apt: “like a ballerina’s tutu” - the intricate patterns morphed in seconds into twists and curls and spirals, before dissipating as ribbons of activity broke out elsewhere. As I grabbed my camera kit and started to set up some timelapses, my wife had the right idea - fetching a chair, a warm blanket and just sitting back drinking in the view (and also taking some irritatingly impressive pictures on her mobile phone!). Meanwhile I grappled with settings for an unfamiliar subject (despite doing tonnes of reading before heading out!) and compositions across the fjord over which the cabin looked out. And all the while just trying to drink in the spectacle that I’d waited so long to see. So over the next few days I’ll be posting a number of my favourite images from those 6 days, during which we had 5 nights with clear skies and belting aurorae. And I’ll try to narrate some of the adventures we had in capturing the images. To start with, here’s a simple image from that first night - my first ever night under a proper aurora display. It’s taken from the side of the fjord outside out cabin; when I saw the colours on the back of the camera, the whole trip had already been worthwhile. After capturing it, I left the camera timelapsing away, discovering after a couple of hours that fjords are tidal, leading to wet feet on my first night as I returned to recover the camera gear!! I’ve also copied below a link to a compilation of the timelapses I captured over the 5 nights. I was there primarily to make images but timelapse is such an effective way to capture the movement that I made sure I had a few ticking away each night. For the image, which I’ve called simply “Dreaming in Senja”, reflecting both the natural beauty and the incredible tiredness while shooting, I used a Canon 6D and Samyang 14mm f/2.8 lens. Foreground was a 75s exposure at ISO6400, stopped down to f/4. Sky was a 10s exposure at ISO6400 at f/2.8. Edited in Lightroom and blended in Photoshop. The timelapse includes various exposures , ISOs and intervals to suit the conditions, but either with Samyang 14mm or Samyang 24mm lenses. You can see how in some sequences the aurora gets so bright as to blow out the highlights in part - rather than interrupt the sequence, chose to let it keep running and enjoy the substorm with my own eyes! Hope you enjoy! ✨📷💚

Great stuff. Really want to get to South Stack one day!

Beautiful. 👍

And my only other image from the holiday, taken within half an hour of the Milky Way shot. This is Cassiopeia over the ruins of Kenidjack Castle in Cornwall, with Kembles Cascade popping into the shot as well. You can see how it was starting to cloud over at this point, but I actually think it adds to the image here. It's certainly authentic!! Details about the image are here.

Well despite the generally hot and clear weather over much of the Summer, our arrival in Cornwall for two weeks seemed to bring out the permacloud, so I only managed a 90 minute window on our last night! However it was still well worth getting out to see the Milky Way in all its glory from dark skies, and there was even some airglow showing up on camera. Here it is above Cape Cornwall, from Kenidjack Castle. Details about the image are here. Hope everyone managed to get a break in over the Summer. 😊