A middle of the night surprise

Strictly speaking this should be a Blip for the 21st April, but my camera is still set to GMT, so 20th it is.

I had been on aurora alert for most of the day as activity was predicted to be quite high, but had to wait until around 11pm when it gets dark enough for viewing at this time of the year. I took lots of test shots, but all I was getting was a faint green glow, so at about 12:30am I headed to bed... and took one last shot through the spare room window, which showed activity had really picked up!

So I put my jacket on (over my pyjamas!), put my shoes on and headed out for an hour or so of aurora photography. It's a good job I didn't have to get up the morning after. The purple pillars were visible to the naked eye as bright white spotlights, it was very eerie. It was a very different display to the big one in February, but still amazing to see. I particularly like this photograph as I managed to capture a meteor low on the horizon just above the houses on the left.