Milky Way and Northern Lights Above a Scottish Loch

A still boat and a dark Scottish loch would already make a lovely foreground for the Milky Way. Add a green aurora to the sky and the photograph becomes a meeting of two very different kinds of light.

Maciej Winiarczyk’s unexpected night-sky display

The time-lapse was made by photographer Maciej Winiarczyk at Loch More in Caithness, Scotland. SWNS published the film on 21 October 2015, describing how the aurora appeared while he was photographing the Milky Way.

Winiarczyk was already living in Scotland and had been pursuing auroras for several years, according to that account. The surprise was this particular display during his planned sequence, rather than his first encounter with the northern lights. The creator credit belongs to him; the verified upload is from SWNS.

The Milky Way and aurora are very different neighbours

The pale, textured band is part of the Milky Way, our own galaxy. As NASA explains, the band we see across the sky is the galaxy’s disk viewed from within it. We are looking through a structure that also contains our solar system.

The aurora is much closer. It is light produced in Earth’s upper atmosphere when energetic particles interact with atmospheric gases. NOAA’s aurora explanation describes this process. In one photograph, the two can appear side by side even though their distances and origins are completely different.

That is what makes this composition so satisfying. The image gives the lights a common setting, with the loch below, while a little background knowledge opens up the enormous difference in scale.

Three details to notice in the frame

• The boat anchors the foreground. Its clear outline offers something familiar before your eye moves toward the stars.
• The lights occupy different parts of the sky. The pale stellar band and greener glow each have room, making their contrasting textures easier to see.
• The water links the scene together. Reflections carry some of the sky’s colour into the lower half, so the foreground stays part of the picture.

Those observations are useful when thinking about your own night photographs. Find a simple foreground and inspect the whole frame, including the water or ground near your feet. An interesting sky is even more memorable when the picture also tells you something about where you are.

For context on how a time-lapse changes the pace and appearance of an aurora, see Tomi Rantanen’s Inari film, including his own explanation of the difference from naked-eye viewing. And if changing shapes are what you enjoy most, explore the story behind the wolf-shaped aurora photograph.