As I’m sure many other people did last night, I poked my head outside a few times later in the evening to see if I could detect any traces of the much-discussed and photographed northern lights. When I’d woken up I’d discovered that they had been visible across much of the UK over Friday night and they were likely to appear again. Sadly this was about the best I got:

After clear skies during much of the day, light cloud was in place. However, even keeping the shutter open longer and looking further up, there was no display of extraordinary colours:

In this shot, you can see through the clouds and make out the stars. Is there a hint of pink or green? Possibly but that is just as likely to be a camera artifact from pushing up the ISO setting on my now relatively archaic DSLR (which I’ve had since the end of 2006). The sky might have cleared and the colours might have come later but, by that point, I was safely tucked away in bed.