An eagle-eyed Tayside photographer has snapped a picture of the Northern Lights glowing over the region.
Ben Hirst caught the stunning image in his Nikon D7000 when he was out at Carrot Hill near Wellbank trying to catch sight of the Perseid meteor shower on Monday.
The avid photographer managed to frame several shots of the meteors as well as tow pictures of the International Space Station in orbit abover earth.
However, he only realised he had captured the Aurora Borealis when he reviewed the pictures at home and was delighted with the results.
“After the International Space Station pass the other night, I went to Carrot hill near Wellbank with my pal to look for and hopefully capture some meteors from the Perseid Shower,” said Ben, who displays his photographs along with fellow snapper Phil Petrie from Arbroath on their Facebook page, Tayside in Pictures.
“I only managed to get a few meteors on camera, two of which are in one shot, and also this shot, which as you can see, also has the Aurora Borealis or Northern lights behind the clouds on the horizon as well.
“I set up my camera pointing to the north and set a remote timer for it to continually take pictures for half an hour. It was when I reviewed the pictures afterwards that I noticed the Aurora on the horizon.
“It wasn’t quite bright enough to see with the naked eye but it showed up quite well on camera. I was really happy to see the Aurora and my friend that I was with was really excited as he had never captured them before.”
The Aurora Borealis is usually only visible from northern parts of the globe at higher altitudes and is a natural light display caused by the collision of energetic charged particles and atoms in the high altitude atmosphere.
The phenomenon is named after the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek name for north wind, Boreas.