Iceland Aurora - October 30th

I have visited Iceland a number of times to view the aurora borealis, the interaction of the charged particles of the solar wind and our Earth's upper atmosphere.  This causes the dance of ribbons of colour across the night sky.  However despite several visits in recent years bad weather has not allowed me to make any observations since 2010.  This October we returned to Iceland for a weeks holiday and needless to say looking out for the northern lights was a priority.  We had travelled to Myvatn in Northern Iceland and were staying in a wooden lodge; the Icelandic weather service were promising clear skies around midnight, and this was also confirmed by a local who said he was going at midnight with a view to photographing them.  This was good enough for me, so at midnight I ventured out in the -12c freezing landscape.  The first thing that struck me was how clear the sky was and just how many stars were visible - Jupiter seemed nearly bright enough to cast shadows.  I looked to the northern sky and could see a faint green arc, slightly brighter than the milky way.  I knew activity wasn't high, the Kp index at the time was at 1 on the scale which is basically next to nothing, however this was the first time in 3 years I had a chance so you have to take what is on offer.  I used my regular aurora photographic setup; a canon 350D on iso800 shooting consecutive 30 second exposures, the lens was a Sigma 10-22mm at 10mm f4.  I managed 77 minutes of continuous exposures before the camera battery started to give up the ghost, and as this was now after 2am I was getting rather cold and tired.  At several times throughout this session I could see the rays and streamers shooting up from the horizon, and the ripples and waves moving along the green arc.  It has taken some work to get the time lapse presented in such a way that the subtle details are not lost through image compression, and as a spin off i'm hopeful some of this new learned technique should lend itself to producing higher resolution solar animations - however the proof of that will have to wait until the sun returns higher in the sky next year.