I supposed that my November post about the barely visible northern lights will be a rare result for a long while. Well, there was very strong aurora later in winter, unfortunately it was raining here all night long. Current strong solar activity met with a perfect weather. Honestly, I never expected to see such strong aurora over here!
I started early, when it got at least little dark. This time I knew I need to do some test shots to notice weak aurora, its often invisible for eyes. And voila, there it was! Very weak pink glow, slowly getting stronger. I made couple photos, but it was not a really good spot, so I jumped into a car and moved on the nearby hill with a good view.
I was honestly shocked when I left the car about 10 minutes later, the sky turned completely red. I made couple still shots and set the camera to time lapse. The show diminished about 20 minutes later, so I decided to move to other place. Original plan was to go home, but meanwhile the red colors changed to zoned aurora with purple-pink upper layer and green bottom. So I had to do a wide panorama, of course.
Then I moved back home, but meanwhile the activity got even stronger then before. I made couple shots around the house and moved back to the fields with no lights in sight, where I made another stills and two time lapse sessions.
In the end, it was almost 4 hours chase, then I really had to stop and get some sleep. I have a stockpile of photos, which needs to be properly processed, stitch panoramas, export time lapse videos. This article is just a preview, more to come, with technical details how I did it.