Northern Lights Dancing Around Ardee Bog

The Northern Lights ( Aurora Borealis ) put on another great display around Ardee Bog on Thursday September 12th.

The solar storm that causes this phenomenon was not as intense as the one earlier this summer and the aurora was only faintly visible to the naked eye. The reason the camera images capture the aurora better is because the shutter was open for 15 seconds. The storm had peaked earlier in the day and was starting to fade by sunset at 8pm, ideally we needed to wait an hour or two for the sky to be dark enough to display it. We were very lucky to have clear skies for the duration of the storm and the moon wasn’t very bright either and was going to set around 10pm.

I had 1 regret from the shooting the solar storm earlier this year in that I took most of the photos from the same location and realised that I should have included some features of the bog in some of them.

I landed at the bog at around 10pm and lucky enough the storm was still strong enough to barely see with the naked eye. Stormanstown Bog is an ideal location as there is very little artificial light in front of you when looking North.

So I ventured out and took a few test shots to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. The shots looked good so I set up at the first planned location with a tree in the mid distance of the image. I used a small LED light to illuminate the foreground as it was far darker than the sky and I wanted to retain some detail in it. With those shots in the bag I headed for the main location I wanted to get, 1 of the larger bog pools. I got there and got set up but only managed to get a few shots before the display faded away. It would peak again later in the night but I was long gone home at stage.

I love the way the colours around the border of the pool reflects the colours in the sky with the Heather & Bog Asphodel lending a purple \ orange tint. The colours were not edited in the images, just the overall brightness and then the highlights and shadows.