An evening of mostly moderate activity with a few shorter bright bursts. There was a lot of cloud around including low level clouds and also a fine layer of higher cloud which obscured a lot of the detail of what auroral activity was occurring.
Near the start of my watch there were some tall rays to the north which appeared green with pinkish tops to the eye and came out a nice purple colour on the camera (Image 1). This activity grew steadily into an indistinct band of green with purple rays at the top (Image 2). At 21:57 a bright green band of aurora suddenly formed in the sky overhead, and over the following minutes this band moved slightly southwards and split into two distinct separate bands (Images 3 and 4). Unfortunately at this time the cloud worsened rapidly, and it became difficult to observe the aurora. It appears that those bands expanded and moved back northwards. From that time onwards then most activity was in the east and north-east (even though the entire northern sky was a non-structured green glow behind the clouds). There were some nice moderate-activity curtains of rays visible between the clouds from 22:27 to 22:39 (Image 5), but activity seemed to die down from 22:40 and we gave up due to cloud at 22:52 and went home.
Image 1. 21:43 UTC. Taken at: ISO = 1600, f/2.8 @ 14 mm, exposure = 25 sec. Looking north.
Image 2. 21:47 UTC. Taken at: ISO = 1600, f/2.8 @ 14 mm, exposure = 21 sec. Looking north.
Image 3. 21:58 UTC. Taken at: ISO = 1600, f/2.8 @ 14 mm, exposure = 20 sec. Looking east/south-east.
Image 4. 22:04 UTC. Taken at: ISO = 1600, f/2.8 @ 14 mm, exposure = 20 sec. Looking south-east with light pollution showing on the clouds to the right.
Image 5. 22:35 UTC. Taken at: ISO = 1600, f/2.8 @ 14 mm, exposure = 6 sec. Looking north-east.
