Hunting for Northern Lights in the UK

After a long day at work on Monday I was looking forward to eating dinner and getting an excessively early night.
However my partner had other ideas. Her friend on Facebook had mentioned there was a chance of seeing Aurora Borealis aka the Northern lights in the UK that night.

I wanted to sleep and she wanted to drive out to great ellingham observatory. So we compromised and drove out to the observatory.

Before we left I did a little research to see just how likely it was to be successful.

https://twitter.com/aurorawatchuk turned out to provide information that was really useful.

It showed that the Aurora was likely and even gave the time for the most solar activity. We headed out and arrived around 20:45.

Upon arrival I set up my phone on it's miniature tripod and tried finding the ideal settings to capture the night sky. Above is the first picture I took and the Aurora is already slightly visible to the right at 20:50!

Pictures taken 9 minutes apart from each other

Oddly enough the camera picked up way more than the human eye. We weren't actually sure if we were even looking at Aurora or clouds most of the time until the long exposure had ended!

This picture shows the streak that made us sure that we were witnessing the Northern lights. Except in person it appeared as a dull orange spike rising from the horizon.

Annoyingly at the peak of the Auroras brightness, cars began turning up in the car park next to the field and sat with their lights shining towards the crowd of people with cameras clearly out.
I had several long exposures ruined including what should have been my best shot.

Thankfully the sky wasn't affected but I had to do an ugly crop to hide the blinding light underneath.

Now I don't need to take my partner to Scandinavia to see the Northern lights! Saved myself at least a thousand dollars there right?

All photos taken by myself using a OnePlus 8