Aurora Hunting in Scotland
Photos of Rattray Head Beach and Lighthouse under the Northern Lights, Tue 19th Sept 2023… Click to view photos full screen
I have to admit I love witnessing the amazing spectacle of the Northern Lights, the excitement I get every single time I see them is palpable, I love it so much that I want everyone around me to experience and see what I’m seeing, I’ve even found myself shout over to complete strangers walking past to tell them to look to the north to see the lights in the sky! (bear in mind this is at night, so in the dark, likely in semi-secluded locations far from the light pollution of the towns and cities, shouting from the dark to complete strangers!!!) I know I’m cringeworthily embarrassing, and for some… possibly terrifying. lol. But I just get that excited sometimes and want to see everyone experience this phenomenon for themselves.
This love for the aurora and need to share it with others is why I’ll often post a heads up post on my social media pages whenever I think there might be a show, I want as many people as possible to witness the amazing spectacle of the Aurora so I thought I’d lay out how I go about capturing it myself.
BTW, I am by no means an expert in Astronomy, Astrophysics or Meteorology. I’m just a guy with a camera who likes the pretty green and red lights the explosions from the sun creates when it hits our atmosphere, so I know pretty much nothing about how the charts, meters and stats actually work or how to properly read them. Most, (if not all) of what I know is from conversations and interactions with other people, YouTube videos or Google searches… So again! I’m absolutely no expert on this subject, I’m just a guy with a camera who enjoys hunting for the northern lights..
As previously stated, I do have a keen interest and I do know a little about where and when to look for signs of a pending aurora storm, I’ve said it before in other blog posts on other subjects and the same applies here, I’m not in any way saying this is the best way or the quickest way to go about capturing the Northern lights, what I’m saying is that this is how I go about making a decision on whither it might be worth heading out on the hunt for aurora and some of the signs/stats that I look out for to help me make that decision.
The very first place I check to see if there’s any aurora activity in the coming days is the spaceweatherlive.com 3 day forecast page on their website. At a glance, this will tell me if there are any upcoming storms predicted in the next three days, As you can see for tonight October 6th 2023 we have a G1 storm prediction for 9pm to midnight, then another G1 storm predictions for 03:00-06:00am then another storm tomorrow night also…
On this video of the Space Weather Live webpage you can see that there are 3 x (G1) storms predicted for the next 24hrs (in reality this is just one continuous GI storm but x3 just feels better! lol)
If I see a storm prediction like this for a certain day I’ll hop onto Windy.com and check for any locations that will have clear skies to the north. but unfortunately from this video you can see that the whole of Scotland is forecast for complete cloud cover for all of tonight and most of tomorrow, with the North West of Scotland getting a possible break tomorrow night but still looking pretty slim for any of these storms unfortunately.
This video of the Windy.com app on my phone shows that pretty much all of Scotland has complete cloud cover and in many places across the central belt having heavy rain throughout the night tonight and into the next morning
The night in particular when I decided to head up and capture these photos above at Rattray Head Lighthouse (18th September 2023) I’d seen some reports of a possible aurora storm moving in after a CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) had sent a large snake like filament of material from the sun in an earth facing direction and was expected to hit around 03:00am and 06:00am on the morning of the 19th of September 2023. So I decided based on the cloud cover for that night (in the video below using Windy.com web app) that the north east coast would be my best bet for clear skies throughout the night and into the next morning. but the decision was a tough one to make based on the distance and fuel costs involved just to get a few photos of the aurora. Bearing in mind that I’m not a professional photographer, I don’t get paid to travel and take photos. Photography for me at the moment is more of a hobby that I cover the costs from my own pocket. (and those are not very deep pockets unfortunately). But anyway! a decision was made and I packed up my car and headed out on what turned out to be a 597 mile round trip to Rattray Head Lighthouse on the Aberdeenshire Coast with a couple of stop offs on the way.
This video of the Windy.com website app on my PC shows that the majority of Scotland on the 18-19th Sept has cloud cover, with the far North-East being the only location to show clear skies throughout the night and next morning
So from there, I know roughly what direction I want to head to, I then head over to Google Earth and see what locations I have pinned for that area that I’d like to visit and whither it was north facing and would work for a location for shooting the aurora. and as you can see from the video there were 2 locations in the North East coast of Scotland that I had pinned on Google earth that I wanted to visit. Dunnottar Castle and Rattray Head Lighthouse. both locations I had wanted to visit for a while and had never seen any aurora photos of before so thought I’d give them a try and if all else failed with these locations for aurora, I could at least stop off there on the way home the following day and get some daytime shots then.
This short video clip shows that I only had two locations that I had pinned on google images for the north east coast of Scotland that might work for aurora photography
If it’s a location I’ve never been to before I might also check LightPollutionMap.com to see what the light pollution situation was like in that area and to the immediate north from that area. as you can see from the video below, the light pollution from Aberdeen to the north of Dunnotar Castle is a little bit much, so when I seen just how bad it was when I got there I quickly made the decision to head further north to Rattray Head.
This is a short video of the Light Pollution Map website showing the light pollution hotspots around the world. Aberdeen like much of Scotland is quite bright in this as you can see. part of Scotland with little to no light pollution is towards the North West Highlands.
That being said, even with all of the light pollution from Aberdeen I could see the aurora pillars with the naked eye as I was driving up the road towards Dunnottar Castle. the pillars where really vivid even through the car windscreen and street lights, sweeping across the sky like a giant curtain blowing in the breeze. it was amazing to see. when I first reached Dunnottar Castle and got out of the car the aurora was visible right across the entire northern sky, even with a 14mm wide angle lens on a full frame camera I had to take a 3 shot panorama just to fit it all in the frame, and even then I didn’t fit it all in.
This was my test shot from the car park at Dunnottar Castle, a three shot pano, with a 14mm on a full frame, so as you can see it took up a lot of the night sky that night.
Thankfully on this occasion everything worked out exactly as it should/could have. the cloud followed along behind me all the way to up past Perth then it stayed clear for the rest of the night, very little wind, mild temperatures throughout the night and an aurora that picked up around 2-3am and lasted all the way right through the night till the following morning, still going strong and still visible to the naked eye even as the early dawn twilight started to brighten up the morning sky.
The planning, effort and everything else put into this trip really payed off, this was an amazing night that I really am glad I got to experience.
But even when on location, I still keep an eye on a few applications that are a great help for real-time aurora hunting. The first and best by far is Glendale Skye Aurora this app allows you to keep an eye on the stats, set up alarms and also to see if anyone has reported seeing the Northern Lights in your location that night. I also check up on some of the webcams further north, two of the best are Cliff Cam 3 and Cliff Cam 2 in the Shetland Isles. these generally face north during the night and you can get a visual on the northern sky to see if the Aurora is visible by camera or not.
But with all said and done there are a few things that have to come together to create a great Northern Lights show in Scotland, and these are;
1 - An Earth facing CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) pushing solar winds towards Earth.
2 - The Solar Wind Speed, the speed in which the solar winds are flowing towards Earth.
3 - The Solar Wind Density, the amount of charged particles within the solar wind flowing towards Earth
4 - And then the Bz, which is the direction of earths magnetic field. for more information on that you can read here https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/
5- Then the big one! Scottish Weather! The clouds!
All these things play there part, but when all of these come together it can create the conditions for one hell of a light show. but ultimately, nothing weather related is ever a guarantee! So you have to be prepared to spend many hours out in the dark and cold Scottish nights with the odd spell of disappointment mixed in with the exhilaration of getting a good show. but the way I look at it every time is…. win or lose, I won’t get anything sitting on the couch.
I hope this blog was of some use to anyone hoping to get out and capture or even just witness the aurora for themselves, and as always… Happy Hunting!
For anyone interested I’ll leave a list of the photography equipment I use/d when out hunting the aurora myself.
In all honesty much of the equipment I use has been bought second hand, and most of these purchases were bought from MPB.com. If you click on any of the items listed below it’ll take you to their website. everything I’ve ever bought from them has been of a much better quality than I expected from it’s description, if it states excellent! then it’s probably closer to near new, and when it’s stated near new! the items I’ve bought have been in a condition that looks like it’s never been used. I would highly recommend buying any new gear, (or selling) any of your old unwanted gear with MPB.
Nikon D750
Benro Mach 3 tripod with G3 Ball Head
Benro FIF28C tripod with IB2 Ball Head
Miops Smart Trigger Intervalometer