The North Wales coast on a midsummer's evening, and this is the time of year when those elusive noctilucent clouds can occasionally be seen in the night sky looking northwards.
With a clear, still night forecast for the early morning of the 21st June 2022 I reckoned I had a good chance of catching these ethereal high altitude ice clouds, formed in the mesosphere, almost on the edge of space at an altitude of around 80km.
The North Wales coast, at a latitude of 53°N, is ideally situated in the sweet spot for these clouds to form, but at this time of year the sky never gets completely dark at night, with a beautiful orange glow remaining along the horizon, blending into the deep blue of space high overhead, so I was anticiapting some lovely colours to set off those ghostly blue/white noctilucents, should they appear.
Thinking about my location for this night time photographic vigil, I wanted a clear view to the horizon, so a seaside would be ideal, but I also wanted some graphic foreground element to set as a silhouette against the glowing sky.
Fortunately for me there's just the spot, only a half hour's drive from my home, Talacre beach with the iconic (and much photographed) Point of Ayr lighthouse curiously placed sticking out of the sand at the water's edge.
I arrived at Talacre just before midnight and was greeted by the wonderful sight of a bank of those noctilucent clouds just above the horizon to the northeast.
So I wasted no time in choosing my spot to include the lighthouse and clouds in my composition for this time lapse video.
I started off with the noctilucent clouds to the right of the lighthouse, hoping that they would creep across the sky from right to left as the night drew on.
But it was not to be, as the clouds stayed stubbornly to the right of my composition, so in the end I moved myself and all my gear a few dozen paces to the left, lining up the clouds with the lighthouse, and started shooting again, to give me the second part of this video.
In the end I kept on filming until twenty past three in the morning, when the sky started to lighten with the approaching sunrise and those mysterious clouds faded from view as though they'd never existed.
But what a wonderful experience, being able to spend the best part of the night watching and filming such rare and fragile beauty.
Filename - talacre noctilucent timelapse 01
Camera - Canon EOS 6DMK2
Lens (1st clip) - 24-105mm zoom @ 24mm
Lens (2nd clip) - 24-105mm zoom @ 40mm
Exposure (start of sequence) - 8 secs @ f/4, ISO800
Exposure (end of sequence) - 6 secs @ f/4, ISO100
Filters - None.
Shooting interval - 10 seconds
Software - Adobe Lightroom and Premiere Pro
Music - The Closing Of Summer - Asher Fulero
Location - Talacre beach, North Wales
This clip - HD 720p, 30fps (4K and 1080p HD formats also available)
Clip duration - 25 seconds
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2023 unless otherwise stated.