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INTRODUCTION: THE PSYCHEDELIC OTHERWORLD It's July 9th and to be honest I'm still buzzing nearly a week after one of the most amazing experiences in all the years I've been pointing my lens at the skies. For some days prior to the night of July 2-3, reports had been coming in from various parts of Europe of fine displays of the "night-shining" Noctilucent Clouds, which as regular readers may recall occur 80km up above the planet's surface at the Mesopause, which marks the boundary between Earth's Mesosphere and Thermosphere. NASA regards this zone as the re-entry altitude and the International Space Station orbits within the Thermosphere: thus, these clouds are right up there at the edge of Space itself, in a hostile environment - the coldest place on Earth - where temperatures can fall to -130C. Conditions here in Wales had been pretty hostile too, but in this case the trouble had been with clouds of a less interesting type - low-level Tropospheric clouds, bringing grey skies and rain and blocking any possibility of getting a look at the "Noctis". But as Saturday July 2nd wore on, at long last the chances of clear skies were looking increasingly good for the early hours of Sunday. A night-shift was on the cards. I've tried photographing these clouds on three other occasions with varying degrees of success (depending on how one defines the latter). There are several issues to take into account. Firstly, it's a depths-of-the-night pursuit, so multisecond exposures are required. Therefore, anything that moves creates a big problem. The camera can be stabilised with a tripod, but the biggest problems are lower-level things closer to the camera that are moving, such as trees (on a windy night) and ordinary clouds, which cause motion-blur. No doubt, then, that a still, cloudless night offers the best chance. Second, you want a better view to the northern horizon than is available down here in the valley, hemmed in by high ridges. I reckoned that could be solved by heading up into the hills to the south of the valley, courtesy of the Machynlleth-Llanidloes mountain road. Preparing for such an expedition is simple. A gallon of diesel in the tank, camera battery fully charged, bracketing shut off, locate headtorch and spare batteries, locate beanbag "tripod" (a knotted pillow-case full of birdseed that can be plonked on any handy surface) and then, somehow, manage to get to sleep by 6pm. The alarm rang at 0100 on Sunday. Fighting off the appealing idea of turning over and going back to sleep, I made strong coffee and a bacon butty and checked for low clouds by looking outside, and then double-checked by studying infrared satellite images on the Met Office website. All was clear: the mission was on. But would the Noctis show - or not? Just after 0200, on the upper part of the mountain road, I arrived at the Wynford Vaughan-Thomas memorial, at the 460m contour and erected a few years ago at what the famous broadcaster reckoned to be the best view in Wales. I'd like to think he would have been gobsmacked by the scene that now lay before me. Across the lower third of the northern sky there lay a delicate tapestry of whites, yellows and ice-blues, here coarsely braided, there as bands of fine ripples, against which the peaks of Cadair Idris, Dyfi Forest and the Arans stabbed out sharply. A gatepost close by suggested itself as a suitable place for the beanbag. For the next hour and a bit, I alternately shot images and gawped at the ever-changing scene, zooming in and out, tweaking the camera's ISO and aperture settings and trying to eliminate any minute fast vibration or slow drift of the camera that would blur the scene. Finally, the eastern sky grew bright to the extent that the display, bit by bit, started to fade and then vanish. It had now gone 0330 BST and by the time I arrived back in Machynlleth it was well and truly light. On Maengwyn Street, the last of the Saturday night drinkers were congregated around a bench, cans in hand. I expect they'd been having a lively time, too. Up there, though, I had been in some kind of strange, almost psychedelic Otherworld - all down to atmospheric chemistry and physics, but then I am a firm believer in Nature's ability to outdo any manmade pharmaceutical when it gets its act together. Perhaps I am in a minority when it comes to such beliefs. The other day, I printed the best image out and showed it to some locals at the pub. Someone asked, completely without any sense of irony,"bloody hell - what were you smoking when you took that?" THE RESULTS These were all taken with a Nikon D300 with an 18-200mm Nikkor zoom, shot with Aperture Priority at ISO 800 and below. To begin with, the display was not massively bright but the brightness steadily increased with time. The images variously show, from left to right, Cadair Idris, the Dyfi Forest and the Arans, topped by the 907m high Aran Fawddwy, which dominates the shots below as it was situated under the best part of the display: The display got brighter: And zoomed-out - Arans (R) and Dyfi Forest (L): Neat ripple-effects appearing: I had been holding the camera, wedged into the beanbag, but some minor blur was still occurring with some of these multisecond exposures, which did not do the scene justice. So next time I very carefully pressed the shutter and stepped back, leaving the camera to do its own thing. The result:   Much better - the image looks good on-screen resized up to 36 x 24". The display continued to brighten as I continued shooting: Zoomed-out again: And zoomed right out: Cadair Idris to the LHS of the display required a much longer exposure, for which a heavy standard tripod should have been used. Of several attempts, this one is not too bad: Back to the main event: Constantly changing in its subtle detail, with more neat rippling effects top R in this one: In the east, the sky was now brightening, but due north the display continued..... ...before fading with the coming dawn: Arriving home, I downloaded the images, sorted out the best and sent them to some media contacts, but have heard nothing, which is rather unusual: having said which, it has hardly been a "usual" week in the media! Either side of that exceptional night, wet conditions have prevailed, including a near-flood on the Dyfi, bringing down all sorts of debris from twigs up to tree-trunks: July 8th, a thundery day in many areas, saw an active train-echo develop in a SW-NE line from near Llangurig up past Llanidloes and towards Newtown. Train-echoing occurs when thunderstorms repeatedly develop and move along convergence-lines (where wind-currents come together): like trucks going along a railway, the affected area gets one storm after another over several hours (a big factor in the cause of the 2004 Boscastle flood). The "echo" bit of the term refers to the radar returns that depict where storm activity/heavy rainfall is occurring. I had a busy day but was able to get over to a favourite vantage-point near Trefeglwys for the later afternoon show.  The image below shows part of the line of storms. Not at all impressive in photographic terms, they nevertheless put on a good display of lightning, with strikes occurring about once a minute. Twenty minutes or so later the line was a bit closer, with the lightning now quite near and the thunder ka-booming as it echoed from hill to hill. Storm-hunting isn't just about the photography - it's a complete overload of the senses on a good day! On the way home an hour later, after things had quietened down, this was the retrospect of the area, complete with lamb trying to hide behind a thistle! But beneath that grey pall, a drama was unfolding: according to BBC Wales: "One person was evacuated from their home in Powys following heavy rain, which also affected roads. Firefighters helped the person to safety in Cwmdu, Llanidloes, after receiving 10 calls from concerned residents from 1700 BST on Friday. Three crews were trying to divert flash flood water from homes. Traffic Wales, the Welsh Government's travel service, said the A470 Cwmbelan bypass at Llangurig was partly blocked, but the water has now receded. The road was affected by flood water between the A44 (Llangurig) and B4518 (Llanidloes). One resident said road conditions north of Llanidloes were "extremely bad" with water coming down from a nearby hillside." One thing that sets Noctilucent Clouds apart from the other variants of unusual/severe weather that I go after is that, so far as I can tell, they don't do any damage! More soon....

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