Tonight, I organized a little trip to the northern lights with my students of Salluit and their twins from Levis, near Quebec city. I dont go often to the northern lights with Inuit... but I know they love it. It was spectacular. Extra : hearing all that whistles to make the northern lights dancing... Wow ! Details : Canon EOS 30D, 10mm, f 3.5, 400 ISO, 15-25 sec. exp.

I was looking at the sunset to see Venus and Mercury, while I was waiting for the sky to get dark to photograph auroras. I didn't have to wait that long, the auroras was very bright early this evening. So I got lucky and managed to get the red glow from the sunset, Venus, Mercury and auroras in the same pictures. Timlapse can be found here: http://vimeo.com/10926347 Canon 5d mark II, 24mm, f4, 1600 asa, 3.2s-20s exposure

A new volcano is just erupting on Iceland and that makes a fine spot for this kind of a composition. Unfortunately, the really good auroras tend to concentrate on the opposite site of the sky, but at least some were willing to get photographed with the smoke brightened by the lava glow.

After a tip off I went hunting aurora after midnight on 12 April - to get the best experience I headed north out of town to a few favourite sites. I got a few photos and enjoyed seeing the aurora again after such a long wait but cloud began to roll in and I thought that would end the display. But as I headed back into town I thought it seemed to be getting stronger again and hoped it might even be bright enough for some in town shots. Sure enough it continued to brighten at silly hours o’clock but I was ready to take a few shots I’ve wanted to get (or improve upon previous attempts) for a while. But after I got home it got even more exciting with streaks, flashes, shooting arcs and rays; it had developed into the G2 storm later recorded. It’s also more than just green in colour with purple and blue also evident, though fairly faint.

Faint auroras photographed close to the active Fimmvorduhalsi crater (Eyjafjallajokull) on april 7th. Brighter auroras appeared 15 minutes before these, unfortunately they were behind (semi-transparent) clouds.

We were greeted again with green lights on sky, started quite small, but sometime after 1am there was good display for hour. Not quite as bright as few days earlier, but sky were lit quite well, something special at this spring as auroras seem to be very strong.