06082011

A semi clear night was forecast and after checking the sky at 22:30 I made up a flask of tea and loaded the equipment in the car, I decided to take the 120mm s/t imaging refractor and the EQ5 and SynScan tracking set-up. Just as I was leaving the house my friend @mars_stu from twitter phoned me to say the aurora reports were starting to come in.

I drove to my dark sky site and arrived about 23:00’ish and the aurora was already visible in the North, North-East and I set up the tripod and Canon 350D and starting taking pictures. The aurora was weak and looked better on the camera view, but there were smatterings of colour just about the Lake District hills. I have taken quite a few images and decided to have a cup of tea and just sit back on the deck chair (always carry one in the boot of the car) and enjoy the very rare Northern Lights. The aurora although weak was still dazzling and once your eyes were dark adapted the structure could be made out.

Imaging Report 6th August 2011
A semi clear night was forecast and after checking the sky at 22:30 I made up a flask of tea and loaded the equipment in the car, I decided to take the 120mm s/t imaging refractor and the EQ5 and SynScan tracking set-up. Just as I was leaving the house my friend @mars_stu from twitter phoned me to say the aurora reports were starting to come in. I drove to my dark sky site and arrived about 23:00’ish and the aurora was already visible in the North, North-East and I set up the tripod and Canon 350D and starting taking pictures. The aurora was weak and looked better on the camera view, but there were smatterings of colour just about the Lake District hills. I have taken quite a few images and decided to have a cup of tea and just sit back on the deck chair (always carry one in the boot of the car) and enjoy the very rare Northern Lights. The aurora although weak was still dazzling and once your eyes were dark adapted the structure could be made out.




Note: I wish there was an Iphone app that made the phone night vision usable, when alerting on twitter the brightness of the screen and app’s just ruins your dark adapted eyesight, and after replying to a few tweets I gave up. I set up the Eq5 and polar aligned the mount, once everything was set correctly I fixed the canon 350D at prime focus and fitted the Bahtinov mast and refocused the scope. At 00:50 I started to image M15 the Globular cluster in Pegasus, although conditions were light cloud and hazy it was clear in that direction (S/E). The cloud was coming in from the South and West and Jupiter was above the Eastern horizon.