My first successful attempt at astrophotography was a particularly good one – the Northern Lights were visible over Ireland. What was a bucket list opportunity for me suddenly became available on my doorstep (literally).
The lights show lasted a good half an hour, starting with green on the eastern horizon with some pink and red in curtains overhead. The air was perfectly still, the trees and the grass staying still for my 6 second exposure. I experimented with exposure times a lot, from long 30 second exposures when the lights began, with a fastest of only a couple of seconds as the lights became stronger, plenty strong enough to see with the naked eye.
It was a spectacular night, clear and still. The light from the aurora compensated for my camera’s small aperture of f3.5, and the stars were clear with very few clouds obscuring our view of them.
