Image Aurora Glen Dye au610615jhp by Jim Henderson

 
Aurora over Scotland > Aurora Glen Dye au610615jhp
Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights displays photographed taken over Aberdeeshire in Scotland since 1989 covering some 350 events with arc, rays, coronas with a wide rnage of shapes and colours
Aurora Glen Dye au610615jhp Scottish Aurora Borealis Glen Dye red purple gas September 1989 slide film taken from Heatheryhaugh just above steep climb out of Glen Dye on the road to the Cairn O’Mount and which looks across to Clachnaben, the notable hill with a tor rocky outcrop which makes it visible from much of Deeside when looking south. This photo is one of the first I took of an Aurora display and came just after midnight when clouds cleared and made the stars and night sky visible. The project to photograph an Aurora came after a missed opportunity earlier in the year in March with what became known as the Big Aurora, a full Corona over Deeside. I had got the idea of trying to photograph a display following on from my success in 1986 of capturing Halley’s Comet thanks to the support of the Astronomy Ian Shepherd at the Edinburgh Observatory. I had heard about the Big Aurora but had missed the display buried away in my darkroom processing B&W photos for the local newspaper. Ian suggested I contact John MacNicol, President of the Aberdeen Astronomy Society and he eventually tipped me off about the display captured here. I took Fuji RHP 400asa and RSP 11, rated at 1600ASA, the fastest available at the time in 35mm slide film of which this photo is an example and I tried both as well as bracketing exposures around the 20 second mark based on my experiences with photographing the Comet. Instead of a telephoto lens as per the Comet, for Aurora I used my widest lens, a Nikkor 28mm with a f2.8 widest aperture. Push processing the slide film at the Fuji lab by two stops to the equivalent of 1600asa I found that an exposure around 20 second eventually gave the best results for best colour saturation and exposure and giving the maximum control of grain without it appearing washed out from underexposure. This basic arrangement eventually worked best when I moved to a DSLR Fuji S2 in 2003 with an ISO of 1600 giving comparable results to the ASA equivalent and the noise factor was akin to the grain of slide film. As I shot my general landscape work using Fuji I stayed with it for the Aurora although Kodak film was acceptable in quality and results. I felt that the Fuji film handled the reds and greens better anyway and these are in practice the primary colours of Aurora displays when oxygen is excited by the incoming electrons. Keywords: Scotland, Scottish, British, North, Northern, East, Aberdeenshire, Royal, Deeside, Glen, Dye, Cairn, O’Mount, road, Heatheryhaugh, Clachnaben, Aurora, Borealis, Arc, Rays, Northern, Lights, Merry Dancers, landscape, photos, photographs, sunspots, solar, flares, CME, electrons, photons, storms, energy, sun, stars, oxygen, gas, Van, Allen, belt, ionosphere, flares, space, molecules, magnetic, disturbance, magnetometers, belts, radiation, purple, red, green, yellow, pink, colourful, colorful, coloured, colored, colours, colors, moon, whirls, celestial, clouds, nature, dark, nights, night-time, forest, 1989, September, December, Boxing, Day, slide, film, Fuji, RHP, RSP11, 400asa, 1600asa, 35mm, time, exposure, Nikon, FM2, wide, angle, lens, 28mm, 24mm, f2.8, scanned, scan, earliest, first, captured
© Jim Henderson
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Photographer: Jim Henderson
Collection: Aurora over Scotland
Filename:
Aurora Glen Dye au610615jhp
Upload Date: 2016-03-18 22:59:13
Photo Size: 10mb 5352x3543 pixels
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Caption:

Scottish Aurora Borealis Glen Dye red purple gas September 1989

slide film taken from Heatheryhaugh just above steep climb out of Glen Dye on the road to the Cairn O’Mount and which looks across to Clachnaben, the notable hill with a tor rocky outcrop which makes it visible from much of Deeside when looking south. This photo is one of the first I took of an Aurora display and came just after midnight when clouds cleared and made the stars and night sky visible. The project to photograph an Aurora came after a missed opportunity earlier in the year in March with what became known as the Big Aurora, a full Corona over Deeside. I had got the idea of trying to photograph a display following on from my success in 1986 of capturing Halley’s Comet thanks to the support of the Astronomy Ian Shepherd at the Edinburgh Observatory. I had heard about the Big Aurora but had missed the display buried away in my darkroom processing B&W photos for the local newspaper. Ian suggested I contact John MacNicol, President of the Aberdeen Astronomy Society and he eventually tipped me off about the display captured here.

I took Fuji RHP 400asa and RSP 11, rated at 1600ASA, the fastest available at the time in 35mm slide film of which this photo is an example and I tried both as well as bracketing exposures around the 20 second mark based on my experiences with photographing the Comet. Instead of a telephoto lens as per the Comet, for Aurora I used my widest lens, a Nikkor 28mm with a f2.8 widest aperture. Push processing the slide film at the Fuji lab by two stops to the equivalent of 1600asa I found that an exposure around 20 second eventually gave the best results for best colour saturation and exposure and giving the maximum control of grain without it appearing washed out from underexposure. This basic arrangement eventually worked best when I moved to a DSLR Fuji S2 in 2003 with an ISO of 1600 giving comparable results to the ASA equivalent and the noise factor was akin to the grain of slide film. As I shot my general landscape work using Fuji I stayed with it for the Aurora although Kodak film was acceptable in quality and results. I felt that the Fuji film handled the reds and greens better anyway and these are in practice the primary colours of Aurora displays when oxygen is excited by the incoming electrons.
Keywords: Scotland, Scottish, British, North, Northern, East, Aberdeenshire, Royal, Deeside, Glen, Dye, Cairn, O’Mount, road, Heatheryhaugh, Clachnaben, Aurora, Borealis, Arc, Rays, Northern, Lights, Merry Dancers, landscape, photos, photographs, sunspots, solar, flares, CME, electrons, photons, storms, energy, sun, stars, oxygen, gas, Van, Allen, belt, ionosphere, flares, space, molecules, magnetic, disturbance, magnetometers, belts, radiation, purple, red, green, yellow, pink, colourful, colorful, coloured, colored, colours, colors, moon, whirls, celestial, clouds, nature, dark, nights, night-time, forest, 1989, September, December, Boxing, Day, slide, film, Fuji, RHP, RSP11, 400asa, 1600asa, 35mm, time, exposure, Nikon, FM2, wide, angle, lens, 28mm, 24mm, f2.8, scanned, scan, earliest, first, captured