What an amazing sight. I was setting up my scope for the clearest night we have had in months and the skies just lit up within minutes. Pale greens and rosy reds dominated the north-west sky, right up to the zenith. Bear in mind there was nearly a full Moon! This was an extremely intense, short-lived storm - it only lasted about 30-40 minutes. All my images were taken between 19:10h and 19:45h UT(GMT).

This view is looking over Conon Bridge and you can see snow-covered Beinn Wyvis to the lower right of the image.

Image was taken using a Nikon Coolpix 5700, RAW format, 17sec, f/2.8, fl=9mm, ISO 200 then processed with Adobe Photoshop CS.

This has got to be my most succesful Northern Lights picture yet.  This corona was right at the zenith and so bright you could see the bright pale green and rosy red streaks of light emanating from all around it.  The streaks were fanning out racing toward the north-west.  The bright "bloom" in the lower left corner is light from the nearly full Moon!  This was an extremely intense, short-lived storm - it only lasted about 30-40 minutes but I am oh so glad I saw it and had my camera ready.

If you know your star maps then have a look at Iota Persei, just above the centre of the image.  There should only be one bright star there, but it looks like there is a pair of equally bright stars. The right hand "star" of the pair is a little "fuzzy".  If you use a PC-based star map, such as Starry Night Enthusiast, and enter the date and time data, you will see that this "star" is, in fact, Comet Machholz (C2004 Q2) - a very lucky encounter indeed!

Image was taken using a Nikon Coolpix 5700, RAW format, 15sec, f/2.8, fl=9mm, ISO 200 then processed with Adobe Photoshop CS.

These two images show how quickly the geomagnetic storm moves. They were taken within 30 seconds of each other and the pale green "waves" on the left of the images have moved considerably. To the naked eye, this looks like "shimmering lace curtains moving in the wind".

Images were taken using a Nikon Coolpix 5700, JPG format, 8sec (left image) : 15sec (right image), f/2.8, fl=9mm, ISO 200 then processed with Adobe Photoshop CS.

With permission from Mark Conner of the US Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. A night-time visible image depicting the aurora's extent Friday evening in northwestern Europe. Image credit: Meteorological Satellite Applications Branch, Air Force Weather Agency.

Giant sunspot 720 appeared and started unleashing X-class solar flares. Strong-to-extreme geomagnetic storms began on Jan. 17th - 21st as a result of CME (coronal mass ejection) hits to Earth's magnetic field.

Sunspot 720 rounding the sun's western limb on Jan. 21st. Credit: Gary Palmer of Los Angeles, CA.

The images below show graphical date from the SAMNET group at various locations in the UK and Scandanavia for Friday 21 January 2005. The upper image is from the York station and the lower image from a range of stations (including York). This shows the onset and intesity of the geomagnetic storm around the time I took the pictures (1910h-1945h UT). Clouds covered the sky at Conon Bridge after 2100h otherwise I'm sure the display would have been equally magnificent around 23:00h.

This aurora display developed over the next 20-30 minutes over the north and north east skyline.

Clouds appeared towards the end which hid it from view but there were some very beautiful interactions with the appearance of the aurora with the partial cloud cover.

I used my manual Zenit E with exposures in the region of 15-20 seconds. The lens was a 58mm Helios and the aperture setting was f/2 and an ISO 400 film was used.