Aurora hunting in the West of Ireland is very difficult and with our constant gloomy weather, but with its dark skies, dramatic coastline and ragged mountains it is also an ideal hunting ground when the weather is good. Last Thursday evening was one of those such days. The previous evening Aurora hunters, myself included had been watching the online data for any sign of a supposedly incoming CME from a small but long period solar flare 2 days previous. When it did happen the previous evening it was caused barely a blimp on the solar wind and magnetic fields. It was not until a 18 hours later that a disturbance interplanetary magnetic field (Bz) occured.

For a geomagnetic storm to develop it is vital that the direction of the interplanetary magnetic field (Bz) turns southward. this happened in the after noon and values of -10nT and lower were constant so it was game on for auroral activity. The Moon was just past first quarter and it looked like it was going to be cloudy within 2 hours so I took a chance and travelled west into the wild's of Connemara to a location that I had only previously seen on Google Earth. This was an expansive lake where the night sky looked like a glossy painting covered in diamonds with the Mamturk mountains in the distance. Even as I was setting up my camera I could see faint light pillars over the distant north west horizon along with the star Vega like a . I was using a Samyang 14mm and a new Canon 50mm lens. Then close to 8pm there was a beautuful upwelling of light well to my north west in the constellation of Cygnus.

The colours were fascinating, something I have not seen since the St Patrick's day display of 2015. The predominant colour was red and green but to see orange, yellow and violet , well this was something as an aurora chaser that I do not see very often. It was a cold night and this outburst only lasted 15 minutes and withing another few it was completely gone, although there was another short burst at 10.20pm although I was well home at that stage. This storming has continued for the following two days from the influence of this event and boost from a Coronal Hole wind stream. But alas the weather has turned bad again. But six displays since September, I'm happy. Thanks for reading.