It took a lot of shots to find 76 eventualy tho I caught it with a 4am fast snap. This was one of those shots that you manage to take and run back to bed before you wake up to much. I only realised I had it the next night when I looked through before deleting....Marginal to say the least !!

23 feb.

Last night my season total reached 75. This is a bit of a psycological milestone for me raising the chance of dare I say it.....no I wont just now !! Its all to easy jinx things. Last nights display came storming in in solid style. There was red showing way up in the sky to 50-60 deg. With such a tall display showing it was seen all over the UK, well those who had a view through the clouds that it. Cloud cover had a few issues for us as well. We never realy got to see a wide horizon anywhere I went last night. With this in mind and along with some badly failed panorama shots spurred me on to head out and hit a couple of classic locations for some narrower views. The subjects chosen were the standing stones of Brodgar and Stenness and for once I was lucky enough to hit both stone circles whilst they were empty and the aurora provided a nice backdrop for the shots. I allways prefer the location empty for the atmosphere plus its less of a pain in the arse for everybody else while im doing short exposures to set up a composition with a light painting torch. All in all Its been huge fun.....here are some shots from the standing stones......hope you enjoy.

We have activity tonight as astronomical darkness is falling. ACE is looking great but snowy showers are tracking towards us....Photos and more to follow as things develop.......

74

Tonight the skys have cleared as we wait for snow. Theres a fair glow going on although it took a while to find a gap in the clouds.

73

I wasnt expecting much at all but the lights are being seen down the east coast. Its poor out with cloudy skies and wintery showers.

72

Moving out of the HSS now and things are quietning down. We got thin activity but lost it behind clouds and rain. Through the ocasional gaps you could see that it wasnt coming to much and like that it stayed.

71

Along wait for the cloud to open finaly produced some colour. Its more rotten conditions just like last night. Last night was worse as it goes, a second night of strong displays missed out on. Never mind tho lots of folks saw it a long way south so thats pretty good. It took a long exposure to bring this out and im right happy with my intervalometer opperating the bulb setting.

A collection of last nights shots for 70.

70

I hit 70 tonight although Im saving celebrations untill my 75th. Its been a good strong show, a nice change from the thin colour of late !

69 for Valentine

At 22.00 a pale difuse aurora began to show. Almost imeadiatly lost to rising cloud.

68

Its been a while since we had any thing at all to report but we are on our second glow in a few nights. We have been overcast so much of late its been a little testing to say the least. We are waiting to see if there will be an incoming CME but so far its not showing on instruments, the next 24hrs will show if its going to pass earth.....we wait paitently

Tonight the solar wind is storming in. We are seeing a strong light considering the moon is so bright. Cloud cover is really stoping us seeing any movment when it was there but at least we have some nice colour. Increased solar wind speeds look set to continue so its all to the good. The morns night might be better !