Saint Eunan's College, Letterkenny - A Twilight View on 25th March 2017

The sky turned into impressive red and yellow during 25th March 2017 and the adjacent days. Here is a view of Saint Eunan’s college in silhouetted with the astonishing colors of sky after sunset.

Brilliant Northern Lights Display over Horn Head Peninsula - Dunfanaghy - Donegal

Brilliant Northern Lights display lighted up the sky from yesterday evening (27th March 2017) till 03:00 am today over Horn Head Peninsula in Dunfanaghy area. Here are some selected frames from the 450 or more shots that I could capture all night long before the camera battery got exhausted. I will be posting a time-lapse movie out of these brilliant aurora displays soon. The show was magnificent; I could see the light pillars dancing in the sky towards the North, and the green background aurora flaring up and down so fast like fire, I could even see the reflection of the dancing lights in the sea (North Atlantic Ocean). Now I understand why Aurora is also called as dancing lights.

Sunny day is a funny day

An aurora click that captured many other worlds by chance!

First of all, thanks a ton dear Balsaraj Pothera and Santhosh Varghese for joining the aurora hunting trip to Horn Head in the cold and windy weather

Even though Aurora (Aurora Borealis – Northern Lights) is the main thing that I focused in this frame, it captured many other worlds in it, let me elaborate these worlds starting with the near ones first and in that order

1. Horn Head view point– The view point is a main attraction of the northern part of Wild Atlantic drive; Horn head is a peninsula in Donegal, Ireland and is an internationally important colony for breeding seabirds such as European shag and razorbill, this area is Natural heritage and refuge for fauna and designated as Special Protection Area and Special Area of Conservatory by the Irish government
2. Atlantic Ocean – What you see beyond the cliffs of Horn head is the Atlantic Ocean which covers approximately 20% of Earth’s surface which itself is the world for many creatures
3. Aurora Borealis – The Northern light occurs about 80-90 kilometers above the sea level and extends to several hundred kilometers above sea level
4. The Stars – The stars that you see in this picture could be housing many planetary system which could be a world by itself, many extra solar planetary systems are being discovered recently
5. The Milky Way – The milky way can be distinguished as the faint white milky band that stretches from left to right in the upper part of this image which aligns with the zig zag part of the iron sign post with the HORN HEAD sculptured in it in the foreground; our own galaxy that contains our Solar system, right now it is considered as a barred spiral galaxy with a diameter between 100,000 light-years and 180,000 light-years and is estimated to contain 100-400 billion stars and probably 100 billion planets
6. Andromeda galaxy – Last but not the least; Andromeda galaxy can be seen as the bright smudge over the brightest part of green Aurora band in this picture; i.e., just towards the lower right of the center point of this image. Andromeda is approximately 220,000 light years across, it is the largest galaxy of the Local Group, it contains at least twice the number of stars in Milky Way and is much more massive than Milky way

The greatest challenge in capturing this image was patiently waiting in the dark, cold and highly windy night for Aurora to turn up bright enough to be captured by the camera. The high wind gusts made it impossible to leave the camera and tripod alone for even a second and it made it very tough to get images without any camera shakes as these images were captured with a shutter speed of 15 to 20 seconds. Even with all the thermal suits and hand gloves, it was difficult to stay out of the car for more than 10-20 minutes at a stretch as temperature outside was around 2 degree Celsius.

A Small Waterfall of River Derg Near Lough Mourne

A Waterfall at Barnesmore Gap (Blue Stack Mountains)

Barnesmore gap is a mountain pass situated in the Bluestack Mountains (Croaghgorms) in County Donegal, the former County Donegal railway run through Barnesmore gap

Northern Lights on a Cloudy Day

The aurora predictions where really high from the evening of 1st March 2017 till 06:00 am with predicted Kp Level 5, but the geomagnetic storm recorded Kp Level 6 from 9:00 pm. The overcast cloud and rain disappointed the aurora hunters in Donegal and Northern Ireland, many reported brilliant aurora displays from South as far as Cork. Regardless the rain and clouds, I decided to go for it and reached Horn Head around 10:00 pm along with my friend Balsaraj. Towards north a very narrow gap was clear of any clouds and we sighted the aurora immediately on reaching the location as we looked towards North. The magnitude of brightness was so good and the portion of light pillars visible through the narrow band of cloud clearance hinted that the real light pillars were magnificent if the sky was clear. The above image is what I could capture after all,  with a zoomed in view of 85 mm on a full frame.