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LATEST SKY EVENTS

January 7th 2025

Happy New Year - UPDATE

Happy New Year everyone!, I hope you all had a very nice Christmas, I thought I would give a quick update just to let you know I'm still here. On New Year's Day a G4 aurora appeared, I just managed to catch the tail end of it at home in Cookstown after dark with the drone, the sky was vivid pink and red with the naked eye up to Polaris, even over the streetlights. It rapidly faded however a pronounced SARs arc remained present in the sky for hours afterwards, I drove to Lough Fea and took my first night sky images of the year.

I have never seen a bright aurora on New Year's Day anytime in my life so that was a very rare treat and a good omen to start off 2025. We also go treated to a beautiful conjunction between Venus and the Crescent Moon on the days ahead, another nice treat and now we are in the middle of a cold spell. Most of the snow has been light here and on the hills however those down south got a decent frontal snow event. I will be on the look out for any further photogenic Winter scenes this week. I might do a write up on the aurora night just to get the new season underway for the website, in the meantime I will be looking for more sky action, I will update again soon. Make sure to check out my 2024 highlights video below.

'Celestial Reprise' 2024 End Of Year Video Presentation - WATCH

Celestial Reprise - my 2024 sky highlights video showcasing various night sky and weather phenomena captured from Ireland and Northern Ireland during the course of the year. All content shot with a DJI Mavic 3 Classic, Canon 5D Mark IV and Canon 600D DSLR cameras, a combination of video footage and time lapse cinematography with a slide show at the end. This year was devoid of many storms, however the huge thunderstorm near Ballyronan during May was the stand out convective event with almost constant anvil thunder, the anvil itself looked like a mushroom cloud exploding in the sky.

The night sky however stole the show this year with several epic aurora displays, even the lesser displays were beautiful and very photogenic. The May 10th G5 was within the top three displays of my life, then the October 10th G4 beat that ranking as the second best display of my life and I've been observing aurora since 1998. These displays were remarkable, rare, severe, nights when dreams came true. Then the June 25th NLC display, that blew me away and caught me off guard during a season when expectations were low, especially during solar maximum. Well this display was supercharged by water droplets from the Hunga Tonga undersea volcano, as a result this NLC display was epic, type 5 brightness with vivid colours and sublime structures, I rank this as my personal best display along with the June 2009 display.

Then comet C/2023 A3 T-A, the brightest northern hemisphere comet in 27 years with a 20 degree naked eye dust tail with an almost full moon in the sky. These events make 2024 a remarkable year for celestial events. In addition to this I have included some nice sunset scenes, fog inversions, dramatic clouds and beautiful snowscapes. Overall it has been a very exciting and unusual year so I hope this video does it all justice. Some of these events will be appearing on a new BBC TV show called 'Chronicles of The Sperrins' due to air during 2025, with myself included, so do watch out for that. You can view the images and chase reports from these adventures on my website below... http://nightskyhunter.com/Storm%20Cha...Thanks very much for watching!

N. Ireland Storm Chasing Image Reports - ARCHIVE

N. Ireland Storm Chasing Reports & Photo Shoots

Astronomy is not the only subject I'm interested in, check out my N. Ireland Storm Chasing section and view the chase reports and images which detail not only storms but other phenomena such as a moonbows, noctilucent clouds, aurora displays and exciting nature related photo shoots.

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Martin McKenna

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