A Song of Ice and Whales: A stunning aurora

Well last night gave us a Northern Lights show that hands down beats any other that I've seen, early in the day I had checked the forecast and it looked as if there was going to be an okay display that night. Over the last few weeks the aurora has been active nearly every night so last night looked to be just the same as other nights. But then in the evening I checked again and suddenly it looked as if there was a geomagnetic storm hitting northern Europe, safe to say I quickly changed my plans and ran out to the nearby lighthouse Grótta to have a good look at them. Even on the drive over we could see the sky was very active everywhere we looked.

Then we got to our spot and escaped from all the cars in the area (it is a very popular spot for the aurora so getting away from the car park is essential). The sky was alight with a display, you could look in every direction and there would be something new to see! The most common colour to see during an auroral display is green, the rarest is red and you also get blue and purple auroras sometimes. Well tonight we had ourselves a green and RED display!

There was even one moment when a huge beam spread over our heads and then circled above us forming a tight ball.

Then the ball... exploded.

It was like a film showing a flower blooming except it was a green and red ball of angelic delight, it is so hard to describe. It was a perfect thing to see, unfortunately as it was directly above me it was nearly impossible to take a picture of it but that was just one of those times where you need to see it rather than take a picture of it.

And this was the perfect chance to give my new tripod a real test!