Sean Batty is passionate about all aspects of the weather, so the much-loved weatherman jumped at the chance to travel to Iceland in hunt of the elusive Aurora Borealis.
The Aurora Borealis – otherwise known as the Northern Lights – are an incredible phenomenon caused by space weather.
Tourism has grown by 15 per cent year-on-year recently, with the rise credited largely to the draw of the Northern Lights.
The stunning scenes are caused by a chain of events: when a solar flare erupts from the sun it sends out a blast of plasma into space travelling up to 8 million kilometres an hour.
Then after 18 hours the solar storm reaches the earth, but it is deflected by the earth’s magnetic field. The magnetic field funnels particles of charged gas to the north and south poles, bouncing it off the upper atmosphere.
On a clear night this can be seen from the earth as the Aurora Australis and the Aurora Borealis.
The scenes are incredible to view, and Sean travelled over to Iceland, before embarking on a five-hour journey once there to get the best viewing spot.
Luckily after all of that Sean managed to get what he was looking for. Witnessing the scenes, the Aurora Borealis looked like a pale yellow to the naked eye, but captured digitally made it appear a vivid green shade.
Daily Record photographer Paul Chappells was also on the same trip, and he managed to capture the lights on camera.
His tips for getting brilliant snaps are using a tripod to steady your snaps and taking a long exposure – maybe around 20 to 30 seconds. Try different exposures to see what looks best. A lot of it is to do with luck too!
The team got lucky and saw some spectacular scenes, and it’s a memory that will live with Sean forever.
Sean: “The images I’ve seen tonight will live with me forever it has just been incredible.”
BATTY FOR THE WEATHER:
- Take a look at a day in the life of Sean
- Volcano causes trouble for Sean!
- Sean shows school pupils how to weather the storm
- Visit the Weatherwatch Twitter
- Visit the Facebook page for Weatherwatch
- More on Weatherwatch programme one: info on the Cairngorm Mountains
- More on The Ski School
- More on the Cairngorm Sledog Centre
- More on photographer Martin Shields
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