AURORA GALLERIES All photographs are the Copyright of Jim Henderson Photography and cannot be used for commercial use without prior agreement . I am delighted if they are used for limited personal use. Visitors to this site might also wish to visit Alamy and key in my name and Aurora to see further examples of this beautiful night sky event. Most of my best photography is now being placed on Alamy at the expense of my own Website and by keying in my name with other themes e.g. sunsets, Scotland, Aberdeenshire, snow, Egypt, etc. you will find over 2200 other examples of my work. For Aurora watchers please note that 2007 continues to be another quiet year for activity in the UK as we are in the so-called Solar Minimum when the sunspot activity is particularly low. Some Aurora displays can be caused by being in the solar wind or from random Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) and to get some idea of when these might give us displays over the UK I suggest watching two useful sites. Spaceweather.com and Aurora Watch co. uk. For those interested in photographing Aurora, I used a DSLR (Fuji s3) which is set on manual with wide open aperture at an ISO of 1600. Set the manual setting so that the lens can be manually focussed to infinity (auto focusing will not work as too dark) and you can also do time exposures using a cable release and a tripod. I find exposure times of around 20 seconds with a wide angle lens with a maximum lens aperture of f2.8 about ideal but experiment as well with different settings. I have found the automatic exposure tends to underexpose and that noise is a problem. On a manual film based system, use 400asa film, push develop the film 2 stops and use the same lens aperture/exposure times as a bench mark. No filters needed. Colours will be saturated compared to your human eye perceptions of the actual aurora. Location could be anywhere in the UK. Of course the further north the better but they are seen regularly in many parts of England, especially the large corona displays. Northern night sky, free of clouds, after full darkness and away from close high hill lines and light pollution are the best viewing scenario. In the autumn The Plough is a good reference point and in the spring Cassiopeia. They are not temperature dependant but of course frosty nights are usually clear so watch for batteries getting flat more quickly. Active galleries are identified by a photograph- click on the photo to enter the Gallery. The thumbnail images in the galleries can be enlarged by one left click on them.
