Something to Crowe about
Published 26 Jan 2012 09:29
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LUCKY residents caught a glimpse of one of the most breathtaking light displays in the world on Sunday.
But for the Humbie-based teacher and photographer who captured the Northern Lights in all their glory from his doorstep, his stunning unedited snap proved to be more than just one for the family album after 'Gladiator' actor Russell Crowe discovered it and shared it with his near-360,000 Twitter followers.
Jim Hunter was able to capture the aurora borealis as the beautiful natural phenomenon, normally confined to the Arctic, was visible through much of Scotland on Sunday night, even as far south as Yorkshire.
Jim, 54, used a four-second exposure on his Nikon D30 camera to capture this stunning shot.
"In Humbie we have very little light pollution so I quite often go out and take pictures of the stars, meteor showers and things like that," he told the Courier. "On Sunday I was out anyway and noticed a green glow in the sky at just after 8pm.
"I took photos from my backdoor looking north, with the glow of the lights of Haddington underneath. It was there probably for about an hour and a half and the curtain was changing all the time, it was really quite spectacular."
Jim then uploaded his favourite snap to picture-sharing site Blipfoto, where Hollywood megastar Crowe found it and retweeted it on his Twitter page, describing it as "beautiful". TV physicist Brian Cox also found and shared the photo.
"It ended up going right across the world," said Jim, a high school teacher at Eyemouth who previously taught at Knox Academy. "Normally I would get about 50 hits on a picture but on this one I had nearly 5,000!"
The phenomenon generally occurs near the poles and is caused by charged particles from the sun interacting with the upper atmosphere. Increased solar activity, however, had sent it further south.
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