Knight of Clear Skies

 Caught the tail-end of the display on Thursday night, enough to make a short timelapse which is best viewed on repeat. I was pleased to pick up a bit of structure this time.

 

Very nice, what software so you use to create the star trail animation please?

Well done Lee. I missed this as I was dealing with some unexpected smoke, and then found my camera battery was almost dead. But I did get some decent images last night.

On 04/03/2024 at 10:57, JeremyS said:

Looks like a SAR (Stable Auroral Red) Arc

Thanks. I imaged it myself last week and was wondering what it was. According to this link the name is misleading and it's not really an aurora:

https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2021/11/22/3308/

"Auroras appear when charged particles rain down from space, hitting the atmosphere and causing it to glow like the picture tube of an old color TV.  SARs form differently. They are a sign of heat energy leaking into the upper atmosphere from Earth’s ring current system."

I missed the brightest part of the display (took me a few minutes to get up the road where there is a clear horizon to the North) but picked up a fair bit with the camera from Cornwall. Was still visible as of half an hour ago.

Well, that's just lovely, a churning roiling dust field. I don't remember seeing a shot quite like this, showing such a coherence of the branching dust structures. Could be a consequence of such a wide field of view and scale of the region it shows. Is that all of the Perseus molecular cloud in view? Would be interesting to compare the distribution of the radio HI signal.

Here's a slightly wider field of view in IR from WISE (W1/W2 channels):

https://viewer.legacysurvey.org/?ra=62.1268&dec=31.2590&layer=unwise-neo6&zoom=6

The IC138/NGC1333 region is particularly interesting in IR:

https://viewer.legacysurvey.org/?ra=54.4457&dec=31.8272&layer=unwise-neo6&zoom=8

Lovely image. There is a lot going on in this part of the sky in IR:

https://viewer.legacysurvey.org/?ra=53.7107&dec=32.1558&layer=unwise-neo6&zoom=8

A project I'd like to do sometime is have a go at blending the WISE data into a widefield shot of this region.

Happy New Year everyone.

Here's a wintery view of the Hurlers triple stone circle under a bright Moon, looking North towards the bright stars of the Plough. The purple glow on the horizon is a bright aurora. The Hurlers are a unique triple stone circle on Bodmin Moor dating to the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age.

https://www.caradonobservatory.com/articles/the-hurlers-by-moonlight

Hard to say really without seeing any images. Amateurs do pick up transient events while imaging from time to time.

1 minute ago, Bluemoonjim said:

I will post image asap. I'm actually still imaging. So will be able to show before and after

 

Thanks. If you put an image up I could have a go at plate-solving it, then look on SIMBAD to see if there is anything interesting there.

https://simbad.cds.unistra.fr/simbad/sim-fid

Could you post an image please?

Certainly doesn't deserve ridicule, it's interesting if something is showing up in your image. But it could well be some kind of optical artifact. I once had something that looked like a comet in a chain of subs but turned out to be a reflection from a bright star a little out of frame. Another time I had an odd artifact from an IR security light on a camera. Measured skepticism is probably the right approach, but dismissal wouldn't be.

A streak doesn't sound right for, say, a supernova as it is a point source, unless a very bright transient or cosmic ray caused a column to saturate.

On 16/09/2023 at 10:02, powerlord said:

why is it a bubble in the middle of nothing ?

Nice capture. I think the oval shape is an artefact due to how Stellarium displays a few selected DSOs.

Here's a two hour timelapse from last night, between 10-12PM.

Two beers meant I couldn't take a trip up to the moors for a better vantage point, but still well worth setting up the camera for.

This was my view:

As I'd had a couple beers a trip up to Bodmin Moor for a better view wasn't an option, but glad I set the camera.

Have a bright purple aurora here, with some green low down to the horizon.

Not the best vantage point, looking up a slope, but the aurora was clearly visible last night. The forecasts show a chance of more displays over the next few days.

Missed the brightest part of the display which was after midnight but still got this:

This was looking up a slope, so not the best vantage point. Would have been well worth my while to get to higher ground but the aurora seemed to be subsiding at that point and I wasn't confident in the weather forecast.

The forecasts show a chance of more displays over the next few days.

Got some worthwhile pictures from Cornwall, even though I don't have a low horizon to the North.

Alert up to red again.

Managed to get a couple pictures from Cornwall earlier this evening but I think it's died down for now. Met Office are saying there is also a chance of visible aurorae tomorrow.

I recently signed up for a bronze plan from Telescope Live, I'm hoping to grab the occasional closeup to complement my own imaging. Here's Herbig-Haro 555 (and others) in the head of the Pelican, the data is from a 24" Planewave in Chile.

What might work nicely is a slow crossfade between the top image and your final one.

Happy New Year everyone. I made this quick video to demonstrate a star tracker in operation. Don't often see DSOs in a video but using the 35mm lens and Ha filter Barnard's Loop and the Angelfish are visible.

 

That's a lovely rendition, full of detail and unforced colours. I like the slightly soft stars myself.

This does look like a bit of a game changer. It may be a tad funky but it does seem to be doing a good job of pulling out detail which matches well with higher resolution images.