Aurora as Seen in Canada, August 2013 – David Nuti
CAA member David Nuti was on vacation in backwoods Canada recently. He did a little fishing and, at night, took full advantage of clear, truly dark skies to do a little stargazing. He did note, however, that his view of the stars was obscured at times by bright lights in the sky. No, it wasn’t light pollution in the sense with which we are all too familiar. Nuti’s view of the stars was hindered by the sky itself in the form of brilliant auroras or “Northern Lights!” Too much of a good thing, perhaps? He shared a couple of photographs with us of a display that took place around midnight, Aug. 13 – 14, 2013.
Aurora as Seen in Canada, August 2013 – David Nuti
Photographic Notes: Nikon D5000, 18mm lens (27mm equiv.), top image – ISO 450, f/5.0, 30 sec.; bottom image – ISO 3200, f/5.0, 40 sec.
On a recent trip to the back woods of Canada, CAA member David Nuti did a little fishing and a little stargazing. We don’t know how the fishing went, but when it came to sky-watching, the “big one” did not get away. Nuti shared a beautiful astrophotograph with the membership and we’re sharing it here: the Great Andromeda Galaxy (M31) appears as a beautiful cloud in the center of this image. Closer inspection reveals he caught a couple of Andromeda’s “satellite galaxies” — smaller “island universes” captured by Andromeda’s enormous gravitational attraction. Messier 110 (M110) is seen here as a glowing spot directly above Andromeda’s glowing center. M32 appears as a golden spot little below and to the right of the galactic giant. Some curving structure may be seen in Andromeda’s faint disk of stars and dust.
Northern Lights the Morning of June 1, 2013. Photo by Christopher Christie.
Actually, a pair of surprises gave night owl CAA member Christopher Christie a wonderful opportunity: a shot at the “northern lights.” A wonderful aurora spread across the Canadian border and descended into the United States as far south as Colorado and Nebraska. The aurora was caused by the unexpected arrival of an interplanetary shock wave on May 31st and that stormy night held the added surprise of clearing skies!
“While it was thunder storming I noticed on one of the web sites I watch that the Bz component of the interplanetary magnetic field tipped sharply south to around a minus 20,” wrote Christie. “So I was keeping an eye on some other sites and the weather, saw the rain was about to let up and since it looked like there would be a good chance of having Aurora if the skies cleared, I decided to give it a try. It was still drizzling when I left but when I got to my spot it had stopped. The skies were still pretty cloudy and I couldn’t really see anything but I took a few pictures anyway, just in case. I noticed this one weird spot that wasn’t moving but kind of getting bigger as the clouds started to break up a little. It was just a green blob, nothing special and no real movement, waves or spikes, but you could see it even with the naked eye. After about an hour the clouds moved back in and it went away so I went home to look through my pics and was happy, wasn’t much but how often do we get Aurora here.” End of round one!
Christie kept monitoring the conditions, however. “So it was about 3 AM and I noticed that the Bz was still way south and it looked like something could happen again and it looked like some clearing was moving in. So of course I had to go back out and I’m glad I did. It was still partly cloudy and the skies never cleared all the way, but it was a great show, all kinds of colors, green, red, purple and white with some waves and spikes. It lasted till almost 5 AM when the sun started to brighten up the horizon and the clouds took back over.”
The image above is one of several Christie made that night and we have enhanced it a bit for display here.
Exposure information: Canon EOS Rebel T3 — ISO 3200, f/3.5, 8 sec., 18mm; June 1, 2013 at 4:08 AM.
CAA member Keven Tag shared this lovely image of M42, the Orion Nebula, with us. His techniques and results are pretty advanced. Here’s what he said: “Thought I’d send this along. The skies were fairly clear last night {March 14} and I was able to get a nice shot of M42. This was captured from my Strongsville driveway so considering the amount of light pollution, results aren’t bad. It helps that it’s a nice bright target.” Technical stuff: a light pollution (Astronomik CLS-CCD) filter. Also, I use a modified Canon Rebel XSi which has the two native Canon filters removed. Here are some other details…. This was from a stack of (1600 ISO) Subs: Lights: 5X20, 5X40; Darks: 5X30; Flats: 5X30. Equipment and processing details — Mount: CGEM, Scope: Stellarvue SVR90, Camera: Canon XSi(Honis modified), Filter: Astronomik CLS-CCD, Mount Control: TheSkyX, Camera Control: BackYardEOS, Processing: Deep Sky Stacker.”
