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Best display of Noctilucent Clouds I have ever seen.

StuartJPP

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StuartJPP

StuartJPP

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Warning, long boring bit at the beginning.

Just as I was about to head off to bed last night/this morning I noticed a nice bright display of NLCs sandwiched between the regular clouds out the bedroom window...looked very promising...typical though since I hadn't expected much since it had been raining earlier and there was a thick blanket of cloud no less than 20 minutes earlier. My NLC imaging rig had been on standby for for ~4 weeks however it was in "macro" mode, as I was trying to capture a Jumping Spider that I had spotted in the house in the afternoon, which subsequently disappeared before I could even get a record shot.

Anyway, I hastily grabbed the bits I needed, head torch, tripod, shoes, fleece, camera, lens, phone, half of which I didn't take with me the last time I imaged NLCs from this location. Other than the head torch not working properly (battery contacts), most things were looking good by the time I got to the top of the hill, that was until I was greeted by a herd of cows...they are meant to be fenced in, but they are free to roam a much wider area as the fences between the pastures have long been flattened.

So at least I had company, even though I wish they weren't there as they were quite interested in my tripod. Plus there were some skittish/boisterous young about and of course protective mothers...but I braved it anyway, and a bonus is that I managed to avoid all the cow pats.

The view wasn't great initially but after about 45 minutes, just as hypothermia was about to set in, the clouds started to clear and what I got to see over the next hour or so the best NLC display I have ever seen, absolutely awesome. Eventually I had to give up as I was absolutely frozen by the blasting wind and the fleece I was wearing was not doing much to help, plus I was pretty tired and the cows were getting angry.

I foolishly took a 135mm and a 16-35mm lens, a big mistake. There's a huge gap in that focal length as previously I was using a cropped camera but now on a full frame 35mm was just too wide, it was okay at 16mm to get the entire NLC FOV in but then there's not much detail and a lot of foreground and black sky. Luckily the tripod has got a panning head attached so I imaged this with the camera in "portrait" mode to capture as much of the sky as possible and the final image comprised 15 frames.

Well enough about that, just one word...Be Prepared :)

Canon 5D Mark III @ ISO400.
Canon 135mm f/2 L @ f/7.
15 Frames @ 3.2 seconds per frame.
Manual Exposure Mode with remote shutter release.
Manfrotto 410 junior geared tripod head.
Hugin to create and stitch the panorama.

Thanks for looking!

 

Click on the image for a larger view...
35539148881_b23a75867a_k.jpg
Leeds Noctilucent Clouds by Stuart, on Flickr

 


A single frame from above:
59591fb0d47a0_2017_07_01-NoctilucentClouds-MZ0A4007.thumb.jpg.0cba3fda777999334d46bcfc64a758fa.jpg

 

 

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StuartJPP

StuartJPP

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Thanks for all the comments everyone! :icon_salut:

 

 

On 02/07/2017 at 19:35, Mr niall said:

Well that's the photo competition over!

 

On 02/07/2017 at 18:22, JOC said:

Well, I think that's the noctilucent clouds contest in the bag StuartJPP!  Well done!

 

Come on guys, there's still 2 months to go yet and there are a lot more competent photographers on here than me!

 

 

 

 

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