We've been sent some great pictures recently from some very talented photographers. Thanks to Matt Melnyk, Olivier Du Tré and Zoltan Kenwell.

Matt Melnyk managed to capture these great shots between 22:45 and 00:00 on May 8th/9th. They were taken 20km north of Edmonton on 97th street. (Click to enlarge):

Olivier Du Tré was out reflecting on the beauty of the Aurora on May 9th and took these stunning pictures just north of Cochrane. (Click to enlarge):

Zoltan Kenwell managed to capture a some great images. To see them, visit his website at:
http://photos.infocusimagery.com/p738443057

Matt Melnyk managed to capture these lovely pictures between 23:30 and 00:30 on May 9th/10th. They were taken 25km north of Edmonton on 97th street. (Click to enlarge) Matt also compiled these great images into a movie, which can be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTn3ARoh7c4

Matt Melnyk sent us more pictures (a subset is presented here) from an event on May 11th. In his words...

I was lucky enough to get a call to fly to Yellowknife last night on the fixed wing air ambulance. I would have to say this was brightest most dramatic display of aurora I've ever seen. These pictures are from 20,000 feet, starting off near Edmonton where the aurora was dim and the closer I got to Yellowknife the brighter and more intense they got. It was a great two and a half hour show while sitting in the cockpit on auto pilot.

Photos were taken between 01:00 am and 03:30 am. The sun was starting to rise at 03:00 am before landing in Yellowknife but it did not obscure the aurora one bit, as you can see in the photos towards the end.

The quality is no where near what I can produce shooting on the ground with a tripod. These are hand held photos at extremely high ISO settings between 5 and 10 second shutter speeds so I apologize for image noise.

A movie comprising of all of Matt's photo's can be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlxv-3lSLg4