The Aurora from 38.5N

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Description

I set up the R5 with a wide lens on the tracker, just next to the house, hoping to catch a few Perseids, not expecting to see any aurora this far south. I only caught a few likely meteors, two of which are in this exposure, from 10:22 pm. With the usual luck here, fog rolled in by 10:45 and the peak activity was likely well after that. (It had looked like the fog would come in hours later.) But at least I have finally caught a few photons from the aurora. The trees are blurry due to the tracker rotating to follow the stars during the 60 second exposure, and by this time it had rotated maybe 25 degrees CCW from when I started it with the camera level. There is a hill on the left but its not that steep . (Polaris is a little above center and the Andromeda galaxy is a blur just under the lower power line close to the right edge.) I’ll set up tonight without tracking and see if there is any more aurora activity. Just don’t want to spend the night on a dark hilltop an hour away and too much else going on to want to fly somewhere and camp under the plane, so I’ll settle for what I can get from home. Maybe we’ll make more effort for the Perseids next year. The radiant is almost on the horizon from here.

Specific Feedback

All comments welcome! I hope some of you had better results!

Technical Details

Screenshot 2024-08-12 at 10.54.13 AM

No adjustments in LR. Into PS for Topaz Denoise (Severe Noise at defaults) then Dust and Scratches filter at 1 px.

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1 Like
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Very cool, Diane. Is that a third one I see going just clockwise of vertical, just to the right of the other two. Looks longer and fainter. Our sky was clear when I went out to turn on watering this morning and I happened to catch one brief flash.

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Thanks, @Dennis_Plank. I meant to have a closer look at that one but now that I did, it is visible on the frames before and after, and moving from top to bottom, so just another of those pesky satellites. The meteors should tail off on both ends.

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I understand the aversion to satellites in photographs, but I have to admit that I’m pretty grateful for some of them, living out in the boonies (all of 10 miles from the state capitol of one of the hubs of technology in this country).

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Didn’t you also get auroras from the last major solar storm? I was about to say your luck in capturing auroras is like me catching the thin crescent moon. :wink: I was thinking of going out tonight for some star work.

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Thanks, @Youssef_Ismail – I bombed out for the last event. I wasn’t expecting to see much this far south and went out and had a look a few times and could see a faint very diffuse red glow to the north but I didn’t realize how much I might have been able to bring out if I had set up the camera. Other people in the area saw more activity well after midnight.

So I set up last night, without the tracker, just shooting repeated exposures, and got only a barely visible glow as the sky began to get lighter.

I’ve had bad luck with crescent moons, too. They are so low on the horizon there is too much dirty thermal-turbulent atmosphere in the way. But your results inspire me to keep trying. I’m apparently not in good standing with the weather gods.

Good luck with stars tonight!