A photo of Lough Owel by Ronan Hunt from Mullingar was unveiled in a major outdoor exhibition in Dublin on Friday, 26 July.
Ronan’s photo titled ‘The Aurora Reflected on Lough Owel’ captured the aurora borealis over the Mullingar lake in May. The exhibition is being run by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS). 23 other images will be displayed alongside Ronan’s image in the free exhibition. His photo was selected for his nomination in the Reach For the Stars astrophotography competition run by DIAS.
The Mullingar photographer was nominated for the Night Sky in Your Hand category. Photos in this category had to be taken on a smartphone without telescopes and was won by Seánie Morris from County Offaly. Winners were decided by a public vote launched by DIAS on Thursday, 13 June. Ronan was delighted to be nominated for the prestigious competition and told Topic about how he got the otherworldly shot.
“It was a cool night. It was the aurora here in Westmeath on the shores of Lough Owel. Taking photos of the aurora in Ireland is pretty difficult. We don’t really get them much. During the winter, we get it, but it is never as strong as the more northern latitude in Norway. This time, it was insane — a proper aurora that you could see in Lapland all across Ireland that night,” he told Topic in June.
“It was tense because I was flying back from London to Ireland that night. In the airport, I was thinking I was going to miss it. I was driving down the motorway at midnight, trying to get to the lake in time to get a picture.”
“I could see the aurora all around the motorway, nearly crashing the car. It was wild. I managed to pull into the lake and take some shots before it finished.”
