Noctilucent Clouds (pic and animations), at the Solstice, Friday 21st June 2019

[TakMan]

Worked from home Friday afternoon and decided at the last minute to bring my Manfrotto tripod back home with me and then recharge the camera battery - just had a feeling.... good job as well, as my first noctilucent cloud observation of the 2019 season happened later on(!) - plus on the Solstice, can’t get better than that. Got 250 shots to play with today (whilst the wife was away on a girls Spa day), of which these are the best...

Trusty old Nikon D3 (full frame), Nikkor AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G ED, tripod mounted, cable release and mirror lock function.

Lightly processed in Adobe Lightroom and stitched together in Photoshop CC2017

Taken from north Lichfield (Staffordshire).

Single shot. ISO 200, 0.8 sec, f/4.5, 24mm, 10.47pm (looking towards Fradley business parks).

 

Panoramic 1 - 6 shots. ISO 200, 0.8 sec, f/4.5, 70mm, 10.49 pm

 

Panoramic 2 - 8 shots. ISO 200, 1.3 sec, f/4.5, 42mm, 10.57 pm

 

Panoramic 3 - 8 shots. ISO 200, 1.3 sec, f/4.5, 60mm, 11.01 pm

 

Panoramic 4 (close up) - 4 shots. ISO 200, 1.3 sec, f/4.5, 70mm, 11.02 pm

 

Panoramic 5 - 9 shots. ISO 200, 1.3 sec, f/4.5, 70mm, 11.02 pm

 

Panoramic 6 - 7 shots. ISO 200, 1.3 sec, f/4.5, 70mm, 11.17 pm

 

 

Packed up and headed home. Saw from my north facing home-office window an interesting feature or two, so swapped to the NIKKOR AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II, to try and get some extra details and get around the streetlights!

Single shot - Detail 1. ISO 200, 2 sec, f/4.5, 200mm, 11.48pm

 

Animation 1 - 40 shots stitched in iMovie. ISO 200, 2 sec, f/4.5, 200mm, 11.48pm - 12.01am

 

 

Single shot - Detail 2. ISO 200, 2 sec, f/4.5, 200mm, 12.01am

 

Animation 2 - 30 shots stitched in iMovie. ISO 200, 2 sec, f/4.5, 200mm, 12.01am - 12.04am

 

 

Single shot - Detail 3. ISO 200, 4 sec, f/4.5, 200mm, 12.04am

 

Animation 3 -  46  shots stitched in iMovie. ISO 200, 4 sec, f/4.5, 200mm, 12.04am - 12.17am

 

Hope you like... the animations remind me of the storms on Jupiter!

Happy NCL hunting anyway...

Damian

Edited June 23, 2019 by TakMan

[Pete Presland]

Beautiful set of there, another cracking display!