It’s the first warm weekend in May, and as it’s England, the first temperate night of the year. Nerd internet is a buzz with natural wonder. Not because the space weather wierdos have emerged to preach the gospel of “coronal mass ejection”.
No nerd net is abuzz because aurora borealis is going to be unusually strong tonight. Strong enough to be seen from urban London. Initially I’m not that fussed. As previously mentioned, I live in a country that grows 64.3% of the world’s cloud cover.
However there is a yearning at the back of my mind. Perhaps I should make the effort. After me an the wife have finished the bedtime procedure (she goes to bed first, plays shitty games on the iPad, gets angry that I’m late to bed, passively aggressively suggested a tv show to watch) we have a look out the window for evidence of solar weather.
The sky has the faint yellow/azure glow of a clear night. I hem and haw. Finally I think “fuck it, it’s not going to happen again anytime soon” and resolve to go out and take pictures.
I live in suburban London. This normally is a handicap for observing the nights sky. I therefore plot a route to the nearest dark place. (Dark being a relative term here)
The place I have selected for tonight’s observations is a former explosives establishment. The Victorian’s chose this site because it was:
1) in the middle of nowhere
2) highly moist.
Now it’s an informal rubbish tip, quarry and rifle range. If you’re lucky, it might also host a number of dogging sessions as well. It is, therefore a perfect place to wonder around at midnight. Having followed the satnav to the entrance, I turn off the main road and drive into a surprisingly well kept country road. As I travel deeper into the marsh, both the wildlife and signs telling me I’m being watched become more apparent.
Every other passing place has a motion activated flood light, complete with flashing “CCTV” cameras. Finally I pass a sign saying “warning: active shooting area. Please be aware of falling shot”. I pull in at the next passing place and turn off the car.
As soon as press the “off” button, the interior lights come on full blast. Well done Renault. Sod you and your night vision, please do not attempt to turn off the lights, they’ll only stay on longer out of spite.
I curse inwardly as I try and join my oversized camera to an undersized tripod. It requires close coordination of both eyes and hands. All I can see are the silhouettes of the two interior lights. Bastard thing.
Finally I open the car door. A wall of noise washes over me. Specifically, The noise of avian and amphibian fucking. Being British, I didn’t think that kind of thing happened here. I suppose that’s the natural world for you.
My stiff upper lip regained, I find north and begin looking for the aurora. I don’t immediately see anything. I belatedly remember that below a certain light level, everything is black and white.
I continue to search the skys for anything “aurora-y”The only thing I see is a black foreground, containing, I assume horny frogs. The inky expanse spreads downwards to the industrial lights of the quarry. The lower third of the sky is dominated by the toenail sliver of the moon, in pleasing fungus yellow.
I take my first few pictures. They are blurry. The autofocus doesn’t work (understandably) and I forget that the tripod wobbles when it touch it. I can hear the choir of space photography nerds tutting. nye had drawn her jinky black veil firmly across the sky. Alas the muses were not with me to help me catch its true majesty.
I finally manage to configure the camera, set the focus and exposure. I curse inwardly, as I fail to remember all the night photography tricks I learnt previously. (for those of you who might be interested, unless you have a remote trigger, you need to setup the shutter delay to ten seconds, otherwise everything will be blurred) I’m about to give up, the photos of the moon are over exposed, the sky is meh, I cannot do this magical scene justice.
I am startled by a particularly horny bird flying close by to me and look up. I see vertical clouds. They look a bit odd, but then it strikes me: fucking astral light show innit.
As you might know if you watch avatar in 3D at a shit cinema, colour perception drops off as the light levels decrease. I didn’t immediately clock the aurora, as it wasn’t blue or red. After all Instagram tells me that the aurora will be in Technicolor. It took a while, but what I did start to see was structure, lots of fine detail.
Having finally remembered most of my night photography techniques, I begin to take something approaching “good” photos of the heavenly clouds. They don’t look like much to me, bit its the best I can do.
The battery is dying on my camera, and I had the wrong lens for this kind of work. So I begin to pack up. As I’m putting the last of my things in the car I hear an engine noise. As I jump into the car, a drain pumping transit van zooms past at “I’m not really a drug dealer, so please don’t follow me down this country road” speed.
I decide it’s time to return home.
As I emerge from the country road into the “vestibule” that joins the main junction, I catch a glance at what I assume were failed doggers in a Prius. Great moustache, poor choice of car for sexy time.
I get home, load the memory card into my computer and look at my phone. I am confronted by the world turned purple and green. I look at my washed out splashes and immediately feel disheartened.
I persevere and start fiddling with the expose and contrast. I am saved by the camera’s massive dynamic range. It turns out there are colours, they are spectacular, and they aren’t drowned out by the noise of the sensor.
There is structure, colour and all sorts of goodness here. Much better than I had hoped for.
Still couldn’t capture the moon though. Thats as good as I got.
It was toe nail fungus coloured though.