Northern Lights

Recently journeyed to Norway, in the hope of seeing the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) Well, it didn't quite go according to plan Nothing was seen during the nights spent on land - indeed, some travellers spent an awful lot of money on night-time excursions into the wilderness hoping to experience them, without much success! However, there was an alert one night on board ship that they had been spotted So, with camera on tripod, release cable in place, settings as previously advised, I ventured out to take a look NOTHING TO BE SEEN! I was aware of greyish "clouds" in the night sky as the ship endeavoured to make up time lost due to gales (up to Force 11!) earlier Anyway, having set up, I clicked away - and found that, although the naked eye saw nothing, the camera picked up the aurora GREAT! Only drawback was that we were moving and the stars and distant shore lights reflected this movement on long exposure shots I cut back exposure to 6 seconds, but this sadly led to a lot of noise On our return, Rob asked me to post some photos onto the forum for members to view I have selected three images - they're pretty awful in terms of quality, but they do give some idea of what the aurora was like (to the camera, anyway!) I'm sad that I don't have better images, but pleased that I do have a record of something I'd not experienced before - and won't ever again

I remember seeing quite a vivid display from Coventry as a child. This would be about 1936. Perhaps Kaga also remembers it.

Midland Red - fantastic! - you are one of the favoured few to have captured these unbelievable phenomena on film. Thank you for sharing these wonderful images. I have always wanted to see the Northern Lights and who knows? One day.....

I've seen them a few times up here but more blue and red in colour shooting across the sky. In fact we are not that far from Pennan which was used as a location in most of the film 'Local Hero' shot in 1984, which features the Northern Lights (Burt Lancaster starred). A pub we sometimes use locally interior was used. Another film shot in the region a couple of years ago was the re-make of 'Whisky Galore' and everyone had their aerials and satellite dishes removed and replaced with new but I digress again!

Although it's not a hard and fast rule, the northern lights are affected by sunspot activity. We are likely to have a long period of very low activity for at least the next 20 years so seeing them will be harder than ever.