Chasing the Northern Lights in Southern England
Approaching it’s peak, the bright shimmering aurora of the Northern Lights. 5.0s 35mm F1.4 ISO 500.
I remember over a decade ago there was a burst of solar activity that meant the Northern Lights could be seen as far south as my hometown of Hitchin. I did not see them then, and I don’t think I know anyone who did. Perhaps the weather was cloudy that night. At the time I thought this was a one-off event that would never be repeated, so I was pretty surprised when a little under two weeks ago I got a message from my dad about an unusually strong Aurora being forecasted by the Met Office.
One of my earlier shots used a longer shutter speed as I was trying to work out whether the green haze (which was less clear on the back of my camera) was the aurora or light pollution. 15.0s 35mm F1.4 ISO 200.
At first I thought little of it, my friend up in North Scotland would see it, as it not too uncommon up there, and that would be that. But then it quickly became apparent on that first Sunday evening that it was even stronger than initially forecasted and it could be seen as far south as Kent and Cornwall. The skies were clear, and I did head out for a short while to try and get a sighting or a photo, but with no luck. One thing I was to learn over the next twenty-four hours is that space weather is not like ordinary weather. There may be high levels of activity but you can’t see it coming like clouds, or be sure that it’ll be there for a long and persistent period of time. It can suddenly appear and then suddenly disappear.
I dropped my shutter speed to 5s which I continued to use from then. Edited you can just about see the pink higher in the sky in this and the previous photo. I couldn’t see it on the back of the camera on the night. 5.0s 35mm F1.4 ISO 500.
I had however seen the Northern Lights before, both times in Iceland. Originally on one of the very last nights of my school trip all the way back in 2008 (fifteen years ago, now that is mad when I think about it). We all had to rush out of bed late at night in to get a glimpse of it. For those who haven’t seen them before it isn’t as shockingly colourful as it appears in photos. The long exposures capture it far better than our eyes can. But the dancing and swirling lights are still something to behold, especially at the scale to which they appear. Back then I only had a very basic point and shoot camera (which I didn’t know how to use outside of Auto) and no tripod. Unsurprisingly I didn’t manage to capture anything, although I think luckily there were one or two other students who did have DSLRs, so we didn’t return home empty handed.
When I took this shot I was in no doubt that the Northern Lights had arrived. Time to get excited. 5.0s 35mm F1.4 ISO 500.
The next time was in 2016 when a few friends and I again went to Iceland for a long weekend. We were very lucky this trip as we saw the Northern Lights every day. In fact, when we turned up to our accommodation the first thing the host said was ‘look up.’ We weren’t disappointed. If you scroll back to the very first image on my Instagram page, you’ll see it was a photo of the aurora from that very night, taken on my GoPro Hero 4 on a small GorillaPod. Sadly, the photography wasn’t any better after that. I lacked a proper tripod, and I was still pretty new to photography, so I failed to capture anything meaningfully in focus with my Nikon D3200. I’d yet to have an opportunity to photograph the Aurora with the equipment and skills I’d developed over the years. Until now.
This image, which heads up this article, has the strongest single strand of light of all the images I’ve chosen. 5.0s 35mm F1.4 ISO 500.
After my failed attempt the previous night and another strong forecast, I decided to come up with a plan of action. I’d scale the nearest big hill with an unobstructed view north and sit out for several hours hoping and praying something would happen. Some of my friends seemed keen as well and it looked like we’d have a good group of us out together attempting to see it. However, whilst the space forecast was looking good, the terrestrial one was not. Solid cloud was predicted, extra frustrating as it had been so clear yesterday. Still, I was determined to persevere with a plan to be on the hill from 9pm onwards.
The dancing and shimmering light at its peak. 5.0s 35mm F1.4 ISO 500.
But the Aurora came earlier then was expected. There was a huge spike around sundown, when the sky was still too bright and I was worried the opportunity may have passed us by. Thankfully fate intervened. Just as I was about to message my friend to come earlier, he pulled up outside my house. Somehow, he’d managed to misread his own text and turn up forty-five minutes early! Right on time. Deacon Hill, which straddles the Hertfordshire/Bedfordshire border, is only a fifteen-minute drive away and it wasn’t long before we were striding up the hill in the dark, hoping. In defiance of the forecast the skies were also beautifully clear, though the moon was very bright. We set up our cameras on the tripods and waited, taking shots periodically to check if anything was happening.
The light was continuing to shift in the sky as I was taking more photos. 5.0s 35mm F1.4 ISO 500.
At first there was nothing. Then all of a sudden it arrived. A moment before I was scrutinising a shot, wondering whether the green tinge I could see was the aurora or whether it was just light pollution. I took another shot, and this time it was filled with bright pink hues. Ten minutes, that’s all we had from 9:05pm to 9:15pm. You could perhaps just about make it out with the naked eye as the sky was slightly lighter, but really you needed a camera to see it. It was made more difficult by the fact it wasn’t overhead, were looking at it in the distance. To say I was overjoyed is an understatement. It’s moment like these which are why I love photography, and I was happily dancing a jig on the top of the hill, snapping away. Luckily someone in my camera club has advised to use shorter shutter speeds to capture the dancing rays of light which I made sure to implement. It was all just so crazy that I was capturing the Northern Lights, not in Iceland or Sweden or Norway, but right on my doorstep in Southern England.
After a few minutes the lights began to fade, though still giving excellent colours in photos. 5.0s 35mm F1.4 ISO 500.
A few of our other friends turned up a bit later and as were leaving not long before midnight, others were turning up to make at attempt as the earlier forecasts had suggested midnight itself would be the peak. Unfortunately for them they didn’t see anything as the high activity levels never returned. Thankfully my friend and I had managed to make it in time. Had he turned up when he was supposed to, we might just have made it but lady lucky pulled through for us, especially as the skies stayed clear for as long as we were out. As the sun reaches its solar maximum in 2025 there is perhaps a chance we could see something like this again in the next few years. But even if it does, it’ll never quite be as special as that first time. Even now it still feels slightly surreal.
The very last of the bright pink light. The colours vary depending on the different parts of the atmosphere where the aurora is occurring. Higher up is pink where oxygen is less dense and the green comes lower down where the density of oxygen is higher. Previously I’d only seen green light in Iceland. 3.0s 35mm F1.4 ISO 800.
Did you manage to see or take photos of the Northern Lights in the UK recently? Let me know in the comments down below.
And then it was gone, everything happened in the space of ten minutes. Next time I get a chance (wherever that is) I’ll definitely experiment with even lower shutter speeds to try to get more clear movement in the light. 3.0s 35mm F1.4 ISO 800.
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