Noctilucent (“night-shining”) clouds are the highest in the atmosphere, at around 76-85km altitude. They only appear in the summer months at latitudes from 50-70º (north or south), when the sun is more than 6º below the horizon. Formed in the mesosphere at very cold temperatures from ice, dust and water vapour, their gossamer threads undulate […]
Some more tests of the Fuji X-T20 in low light conditions. Summer has the worst daytime light for photography with harsh shadows and washed-out pale tones; however I love the night sky with its permanent twilight (at this latitude) giving cobalt blue sky with hints of the sun’s warmth just below the horizon. Plus it’s […]
That was 2017-06-20, that was. A beautiful blue sky with white fluffy wispy cirrus cloud catching the setting sun… …followed by a noctilucent cloud display around 1am: NLCs are the highest-flying clouds, occurring at altitudes up to 80km where the next highest type (cumulonimbus) only reaches 12km and most are lower still. Most typically they […]
It’s just a week off being the longest day, and it seems never to really get dark at night around here at the moment. Still. While that precludes shooting the aurora, instead it’s noctilucent cloud (NLC) season – just started in the past couple of days so I was very pleased to capture these last […]
Happy new year! I saw the year in from Blackford Hill looking at the fireworks over Edinburgh Castle. Watching folks arrive was almost like a scene from Lord of the Rings – this line of torch lights processing along the hillside track, reminiscent of the last march of the Elves.
I spent a happy afternoon and evening watching light turn to dusk over Edinburgh city centre from Blackford Hill.
Just to disprove the idea of deterministic landscape photography, as I was driving back from Acharn through Grandtully along Strathtay, the sky took on a most beautiful glowing cobalt-blue colour of dusk combined with the icy diamond clarity of sub-zero late autumn temperatures in the Highlands. One of those scenes where it took a little […]
Late Saturday evening, I was driving back from Argyll to Perthshire; got as far as a country lane outside Braco a few miles from home and saw this beautiful fog swirling around a copse of trees with the Ochils in the background, all in the silvery moonlight. Olympus Pen-F, Pentax 50mm f/1.7, 3 frames […]
Wonderful amazing weather last night. The thunderstorm started around midnight, resumed sparking silently but continuously in the distance from 2 to 3am and then restarted yet again around 8-9am with jubilant thundercracks and resounding booming rumbles echoing off the clouds. These photos were made around 2.30am – just the distant lightning illuminating the clouds. Epic.
Further experiments making timelapse videos – this time the sunset looking across Strathearn to Crieff – from my favourite spot for hunting aurora. The second has Ursa Major emerging, one star at a time, over the course of 50 minutes around midnight. Both were taken using the Olympus Pen-F with its built-in intervalometer – the […]