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. 

Sunrise on 8th February 2017 - A view from Thornberry Estate in Letterkenny

The sunrise (One of the most photographed celestial event along with Sunset) on 8th February 2017 was spectacular, the red and yellow sky gave a warm welcome even though the temperature was around zero with frost all over the ground.

Moon, Venus and Mars Conjunction over Cathedral of St. Eunan and St. Columba - Letterkenny

The three celestial objects - Moon, Venus and Mars showcased a spectacular shown on the evening sky of 31st January 2017. Venus was high enough from the horizon to be clearly spotted by anyone looking towards the West for the past couple of months, similar alignment occurred during the past two similar phase of moon in the last two months. I was delighted to capture the previous alignment which happened around the start of this year and the photos were posted here => http://deepugeorge.blogspot.ie/2017/01/moon-venus-conjunction-2017-jan-2ndmoo.html

The last alignment during the first week of this year made almost the Syzygy arrangement (a word used to denote the  straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies in a gravitational system), with Venus and Mars on either side of the crescent moon.

This time, the alignment pictured a smiley face in the sky, Venus positioned towards 2-O-Clock direction and Mars positioned to near 12-O-Clock direction relative to the crescent moon.

Northern lights view from Horn Head on the night of 2017 January 31

January 31st turned out to be a double bonus day for astrophotography enthusiasts, by evening the Moon-Venus-Mars conjunction decorated the evening sky. After a few clicks of the beautiful alignment of the three celestial bodies in the Western part of the sky, I headed towards Horn Head Peninsula - a very good location to watch for Aurora Borealis in Ireland. The night turned out to be fruitful with mostly clear skies and without high wind, more importantly, the atmosphere humidity and temperature of around 2 to 3 degree Celsius did not do dew up the lens. I missed a very good spell of the dancing lights by the time I reached the location (around 9:15 pm Irish time), I met another guy on top of the cliff, who had already photographed a few beautiful snaps by then. In the next two to three hours I kept on clicking until the Aurora almost disappeared from the sky, and I was lucky to create an 18 second’s time lapse video that covered around 2 hours of Aurora. For the first time in my life, the Aurora was bright enough to be clearly seen by the naked eyes. When I reached back home at 03:00 am on Feb 1st, I was so eager to transfer the images to the pc and view them. The images turned up to be satisfactory, so I managed to do the final processing and time lapse video creation as well as publishing the contents to this blog and face book before I went to (I am going to :) ) sleep. 

Time-Lapse Video

Letterkenny on a Cloudy Evening

The clouds dramatically imitated the crepuscular sun rays, the cloud lines appeared to be radiating away from a distant thunder cloud that made the evening so chilly on the winter evening of 27th January 2017

Crepuscular rays over Lough Finn - A view from Fintown

From wikipedia: The lough, along with its neighbouring village of Fintown in County Dongeal, was named after a mythological woman, Finngeal, who drowned in the lake after attempting to save her wounded brother Feargamhain

Donegal recorded freezing weather on 21st January 2017. The frost that formed overnight was not completely melted way from north facing slopes and law lying grounds even when this picture was clicked  (around 4:00 pm in the evening).  The sky remained mostly clear throughout the day time, but few clouds formed over these mountains by then. I felt so glad to reach this location at that time, the crepuscular rays appeared and decorated the mountain just after a few clicks, the rays disappeared within the next couple of minutes as the high wind made the clouds cover the sunshine.

Sunrise in Letterkenny - 21st January 2017

On this frosty day when the temperature was at zero degree, the rise was at 8:37 am local time, but the sun was not high enough to be seen for another 10 minutes, the grounds and grass were covered in frost, it was foggy when I went to bed the previous day, and never thought that it would clear up in the morning. The contrails marked comet like streaks around the sun and added to the beauty of most photographed celestial event.

Moon Venus Conjunction - 2017 Jan 2nd

Moon, Venus and Mars over Polestar roundabout in Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, Ireland

Moon and Venus over the silhouette of a tree

Moon and Venus over the silhouette of a tree in the evening sky

Moon and Venus on the previous day (Jan 1st 2017) when the moon lit side of Moon was pointing away from Venus

Happy New Year 2017 - A foggy and frosty winter morning view of Letterkenny

- 

On a foggy and frosty winter morning (2016 November 24th) the sunrise was so pleasant, the sun rose up on top of the distant mountains that peaked out of the fog layer which covered up the low lying areas of Letterkenny