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Dancing Lights - Northern Lights at Horn head, Donegal 02:00 am 06th March 2022

The Sheep Never Miss a Heavenly Light @Hornhead, Donegal 2022-02-10 around10:30 pm

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Northern Lights, Milky way, Andromeda & Jupiter in one frame - A Panorama from Horn Head, Donegal

• Northern Lights - The pinkish/reddish glow towards the left half of the sky is the aftermath of a grand Northern lights display. 
• Milky Way - The Milky Way arches and connects to the orange glow of city lights towards the right (Lights from Dunfanaghy, Ireland) 
• The brightest spot on the right most edge just above the horizon is Jupiter.
• Andromeda Galaxy – The diagonal bright patch just over the edge of the pole near my parked car in the image center is Andromeda Galaxy – another Island Universe!

The panorama spans almost 180 degree or more North to South and is stitched together from 18 individual images; the foreground is lit by the light from a mobile phone.

The individual images are clicked on 21st April 2018 around 2:30 am in the morning after a brilliant display of Northern lights from 12:00 am till 02:15 am. The pinkish-reddish glow of Aurora was still left over the Northern sky even after then.

Aurora and Crescent Moon Set at Horn Head, Donegal

Aurora and Crescent Moon Set at Horn Head, Donegal on 2018 April 21 01:10 AM

Aurora click from Lough Salt - Donegal - 02 September 2017 04:28 am Irish time

Aurora prediction was rather low (less than G1) but the sky was clear after the moon set around 02:00am. So I thought of giving a try to capture a Milky Way panorama. After clicking a few snaps from a dark sky location in Donegal, I thought giving it another try form the view point near Lough Salt since the brightest part of the Galaxy was covered by a nearby hill. Around 4:20 I reached Lough Salt and I could see faint beams of light pointing upwards, but never thought that it could be Aurora after all the low prediction level. But when I looked at the first shot, to my surprise, it turned out to be Aurora. So I gave up the Milky Way panorama idea and started clicking the Aurora. It faded of slowly as the astronomical dawn happened over the next half an hour. These two clicks are taken at 04:28am and 04:29am. As a bonus, when I processed the image, I could also find the green Airglow in these images and these are my first Airglow captures.

Northern Lights - Horn Head, Dunfanaghy, Donegal, Ireland on 27th March 2017

County Donegal witnessed beautiful Northern lights (Aurora Borealis) from the evening of 27th March 2017 till next day morning 4:30am. Here is a time-lapse video created from 745 raw images captured from Horn Head View point near Dunfanaghy, Donegal, Ireland. You can see the lights literally dancing which is why sometimes it is referred as Dancing Lights or Dance of the Spirits.

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.

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.

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. 

Aurora Borealis from Horn Head on 24th November

Aurora selfie

The  aurora weather forecast was Kp Level of 4.0 around midnight, I started to drive from Letterkenny to my favorite and nearest Aurora view location - Horn Head Peninsula around 8:30 pm . My friend Balu joined me, and we reached there shortly after 9:00 pm, the pale green band near the horizon was visible to the naked eye, but long exposure pics exposed the Aurora very well. The night sky was very clear, but the temperature dropped below freezing. On the way back to Letterkenny the car dashboard logged -6 degree between Kilmacrenan and letterkennny, and the trees and roads on each sides turned white as frost accumulated on them.

Aurora view from the small shelter on top of the Horn Head Peninsula

A star trail picture created from 61 images captured over 30 minutes

This is the brightest image that I could capture on the night when Kp level prediction stayed at Kp 4.0

Northern Lights (Aurora) view from Horn Head Peninsula on the night of 2016 October 13

Geomagnetic Storm of level G3~G1 prediction stayed active from noon time on 13th October and I couldn't wait to rush home after office hours to a North most and dark location to witness it for the first time in my life. At 3:30 pm, I rang home and asked my better half to keep the camera batteries fully charged. I finished my supper early to reach the destination as soon as night falls in, I took all my accessories (camera, a head lamp, GPS Navigation, tripod) and drove to  Horn Head Peninsula - a location from where I can look towards the North Atlantic Ocean and Horizon form 180 meter above sea level.

My effort turned out fruitful, even though the moon was 80% or 90% full, and up in the western sky, I could see a grey/green haze towards the North, but the camera captured all the colors that my naked eye couldn't see.

Out of around 200 Images that I captured between October 13th 9:30 pm - October 14th 01:30 am (Irish Time), here are the four that had distinctive features such as green pillars and purple haze over the green patch. These four clicks had a time stamp around 12:30 am Irish Standard Time on it.

The temperature was around 6 to 7 degree Celsius and within 15-20 minutes my fingers became numb and was quite difficult to operate the camera, I had to take back my camera down to my parked car a couple of times to remove the lens-fog-condensation by turning on the car heater to the maximum. A battery operated hair dryer and a pair of gloves for my hand should have helped much if I had them handy.