It was February 27th 2014, a few years into landscape photography, when I first became aware that it was occasionally possible to capture the aurora in camera in Northern Ireland. I remember that the possibility was announced on the local BBC news that evening. The night was clear, so after some hasty research as to the best settings, I headed north to the coast.

Hopes that I might be on my own were dashed immediately. There were cars everywhere. Finally I hit on the idea of going to the old limestone quarry at Larry Bane and photographing Sheep Island. There was no one else there. As I looked north I was aware of a strange grey mist near the horizon. That’s what it looked like, although it was too bright to be mist. I set up my tripod, opened the shutter on my F4 lens for 30 seconds at ISO3200…. and nearly fell over when the result flashed up on the back of my camera.

It was just over a year later that there was another alert on a clear night, so I headed out again, this time to the iconic church at Ballintoy, where I met local photographer Paul Moane, who kindly shared a few tips. The Aurora wasn’t as strong and my lens wasn’t quite wide enough for the tight space of the graveyard but it was still another remarkable evening.

Then in April of that year, on the night of my birthday, when my wife and I arrived home from two different church events, I noticed the same strange greyness in the northern sky over Gallows Hill. As our eyes grew accustomed to the dark, the Aurora colour became very visible. Heather could especially see the pink, whereas for me the green was much the stronger colour. (Explain that?)

Apart from a brief appearance again in December of that year, Aurora hunting went quiet for me until November 2017 when some photography friends invited me to join them on another Aurora adventure. It was a clear night but with a full moon which, while it provided interesting foreground light, reduced the overall colour intensity. It was still dramatic.

Some pillars began to form when we went round the coast to the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, but we now had to contend with a bank of cloud on the horizon and the light house on Rathlin.

Then the Aurora largely went quiet, with just a few hints here and there that I captured, and I learned that it would not be until around 2024 that strong Auroras would reappear this far south. In Iceland and other arctic countries, of course, the Aurora continued to dance. And part of my hope for the trip to Iceland in February 2023 was that we might see the Aurora. Alas, on the night it was predicted, clouds piled in. (I discovered later that there had been a good Aurora showing back home that night!)

Various local alerts came and went. To tell the truth I was beginning to lose interest. I went out one evening last November and photographed the Aurora at Portballintrae but was rather underwhelmed. It was just more of the same, a band of green low on the horizon, with a hint of magenta above. Nothing special.

Until last Friday. Once again the media was filled with anticipation. But I was dragging my feet. It was Northwest 200 weekend (a massive motorbike event on the north coast), everywhere would be crowded. Why bother. Until my friend Kieran Dodds, a professional photographer from Edinburgh sent me a photo he had just taken from his bedroom, with a one word caption: INSANE!

My wife virtually pushed me out the door. “You’ll always regret it if you don’t go.”

Once again I had the challenge of trying to find somewhere that wasn’t too crowded. In the intervening years since 2014, photography has become much more widespread thanks to Instagram and the iPhone. The roads were crazy, like Christmas! I drove to the Giant’s Causeway and set out along the cliff path. Below me I could see the cars and torches of the crowds packing the Causeway itself so I decided to stay high where there were fewer people and no car headlamps! On my walk up, I noticed a photographer sitting on a bench. “Too cloudy”, he said in a resigned tone. I smiled and pressed on uphill, pausing after a few minutes to take a test shot.

This looked very promising. It was also surprising as I was shooting West rather than North. I moved further along the path to where I knew there was a large patch of level ground and a reasonably panoramic view, from Portballintrae to the south west to the Causeway itself in the north.

Already this was remarkable. The colours were growing in brightness and intensity, despite the presence of a slight sea mist and some cloud, and pillars were starting to shoot off in all directions. It became hard to know where to shoot. I would have needed a much wider lens than 16mm but even then I wouldn’t have been able to capture it all as the Aurora was right overhead and almost all around. It was phenomenal. I could have tried to move to other locations but I was mesmerised by the dancing lights and just wanted to enjoy it. The following are some of my best photographs from an unforgettable night.

In this final image I attempted to shoot high to capture the centre of the Aurora.

According to the experts, we have not seen the last of the Aurora this year. The Sun is approaching what is known as “solar maximum”, a point during an 11 year cycle when its activity is strongest. Every eleven years the Sun’s magnetic poles flip, which causes sunspots which in turn cause ejections of material (plasma) which cause solar storms. There were at least five coronal mass ejections (to use the technical term) that resulted in the geostorm that headed towards the earth. Around 18 hours later they interacted with the magnetic field (the Magnetosphere) that protects the earth from radiation. The Northern Lights are caused when these charged particles hit oxygen and nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The varied colours relate both to the different gasses and the height above earth. Green is the most common colour, caused by the charged particles interacting with oxygen at anything up to 150 miles. Red occurs above 150 miles. Nitrogen produces the purple (above 60 miles) and blue (below 60 miles).

When there is a really strong storm, such as this month - the strongest in 30 years - the Aurora can be seen much further south than usual. For example it was visible to the naked eye throughout the UK and also in California.

As I stood by my tripod a couple of young men joined me, showed me the photos they had managed to take with their iPhones (I hadn’t even thought of using my iPhone - too old school) and looked at the images on the back of my camera. They had driven up from Belfast just for this and were in touch with friends scattered across the north. In this technologically transformed world it was so good to see and share their enthusiasm for the wonders unfolding above our heads.