Was just about to post another mediocre offering from the ‘Hard Knott’ series last night when I received a ‘red’ aurora alert. Where I live, in North West England, the chances of that occurring when the skies are clear are rare and the last time it happened, it was feckin incredible. On that occasion, it being a Friday, I’d started on the single malt and The Dude had been hard at it all afternoon. Waking sleeping wives was deemed inadvisable so we were going nowhere. As it happened, the display that night was so intense that even under the light-polluted skies in my back garden, the shots I got were pretty darn good.
Anyhoo, camera and tripod in hand, i bobbed out to the garden where a quick test shot revealed a purple spire poking up behind the house. Even in my, somewhat, ‘enhanced’ state of mind, I noted this to be unusual so, once panic had properly set in, plans were made in haste, kit was chaotically assembled, eggs were promptly scrambled (am pretty sure that’s what’s expected of one, on such occasions) and off we sailed into the Lancashire countryside. Much gratitude goes out to The Dude who heroically transported us to one of his childhood haunts where we had a most excellent few hours observing the second awesome auroral display visible from Lancashire this year, along with Perseid meteors and a Mars-Jupiter conjunction. What a night
No good meteor captures, unfortunately, because I was concentrating on the Aurora and keeping shutter speeds relatively fast to capture structure plus, the batteries for my intervalometer were uncooperative as a result of sitting unloved in the bottom of my bag for years plus, I forgot to bring a spare battery and the one in the camera was only half full.
I’ll be better prepared next time. Probably.
Loading contexts...
