What did you see tonight?

[Captain Scarlet]

Aurora totally naked eye for me tonight, quite stunning. Pink and green so bright. I’ve seen it from here before, but nothing like this. Herewith a DSLR shot which obviously is much brighter than one’s eye can see:

I had a scope out to cool, but at midnight the sky is still so bright with spreading green Skyglow that there’s no point. Big Dipper is almost extinguished and the Milky Way totally invisible.

A really memorable night, though.

M

Edited October 10 by Captain Scarlet

[AlcorAlly]

Same here! For those who also saw the 10th of May display - was it even more spectacular? 

Those are just unedited iPhone shots.

Edited October 11 by AlcorAlly

[TakMan]

Ruddy Northern Lights…. ‘Ruining’ another night of imaging here in Lichfield!

iPhone12 (3 sec exposures)

Damian

[TakMan]

1 minute ago, AlcorAlly said:

Same here! For those who also saw the 10th of May display - was it even more spectacular? 

Those are just unedited iPhone shots.

 

Yes, I would say so - certainly stronger and more animated, but beggars can’t be choosers, hey!

[Knight of Clear Skies]

It went crazy for a while sometime after midnight. I saw both the 10th May and Perseid displays but I think the colours were much more vivid tonight, even though there wasn't as much structure. Seems to have calmed down for the time being.

3 bright displays of the Northern Lights in one year is not something I ever expected, especially from Cornwall.

[Captain Scarlet]

I went back inside and after a few minutes noticed from inside a room it had got even brighter outside. Bright, bright pink and green to the naked eye, extending at times to directly overhead. I got my SQM-L and it measured 18.6. I’d expect 21.5 on a night like tonight. Pleiades were borderline invisible in the East!

 

[josefk]

Totally wowser here in Sth lincs too in two long spells either side of Midnight. It was fully horizon to horizon at one point in the second spell maybe even more than 200-degrees extent east/west and from zenith down to the northern horizon, one half of the sky naked eye red with subtle greens including curtain like streaks. The south side of the sky relatively normal. Incredible. Incredible to see red Mars (naked eye) through  the lobster pink and like Magnus seeing the Pleiades disappearing into the sunset like glow.  

i had 19.3x on the SQM before the light show. 
I can’t believe I didn’t bring a real camera out. 🙃

Edited October 11 by josefk

[SwiMatt]

...I hate you all 😶‍🌫️🤣 

It's the second big aurora display I miss this year due to being completely clouded over until 7am. And when I was going to work there was a clear sky of course. 

Edited October 11 by SwiMatt

[wookie1965]

Not as spectacular as some of these but I got some. Well I can see red hues on my phone.

Edited October 11 by wookie1965

[Elara]

Lovely photos everyone! There was an amazing display here last night, best I’ve seen. I managed a few decent photos using my iPhone 13. I’m quite pleased with the results. 
The last one has Jupiter just below the telephone wire and to its right Aldebaran, you can make out the familiar asterism; above is Pleiades, but I’m not sure what that is in the middle when you zoom in? - perhaps an aberration due to the aurora conditions.

[Littleguy80]

About 00:30 we got round two. Clearly naked eye right up to the zenith, very similar to May. The pink stood out the most to the eye. 

 

 

 

 

[Ouroboros]

Wow. I looked out the window during the night and all cloudy. ☹️

[Elara]

27 minutes ago, Littleguy80 said:

About 00:30 we got round two. Clearly naked eye right up to the zenith, very similar to May. The pink stood out the most to the eye. 

 

 

 

 

Loving no. 2 Neil, cracking photo!

[Paul M]

I'd say it was at least as intense as last May's big auroral storm.

Here is my overnight timelapse from my remote alksky camera in Cumbria. I messed with the max exposure time early on so there is a bit of a glitch.

 

 

[josefk]

That is outstanding @Paul M  fantastic

[badhex]

14 minutes ago, Paul M said:

I'd say it was at least as intense as last May's big auroral storm.

Here is my overnight timelapse from my remote alksky camera in Cumbria. I messed with the max exposure time early on so there is a bit of a glitch.

 

 

Incredible!👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Out of interest, which allsky cam did you take this with?

[josefk]

Here are four screenshots of my phone pics gallery. They’re not at regular time intervals so not scientific but they give a sense of the ebb and flow of the event (in Sth lincs) between 22:00 or so and 01:00 (the period I was taking pics), first pic earliest, last pic latest:

 

Edited October 11 by josefk

[RobertI]

I honestly thought aliens were landing last night! The sky was on fire with pinks and reds, I think it helped that I was well dark adapted, colours easily visible to the naked eye, better than last May in my opinion. Extending overhead and to the south, across the square of Pagasus and the Pleiades. I will forgive the Aurora for ruining my observing session!!

[RobertI]

31 minutes ago, Paul M said:

I'd say it was at least as intense as last May's big auroral storm.

Here is my overnight timelapse from my remote alksky camera in Cumbria. I messed with the max exposure time early on so there is a bit of a glitch.

 

 

Amazing, fascinating to see how it played out from start to finish. 

[Ratlet]

So attempted some observing with the polarising filter which was an untigitaged disaster lol.  Turns out triple stacking filters on an svbony 3-8mm zoom makes it incredibly long.  So long it won't fit in the 2"-1.25" reducer with 2" filter screwed in lol.  Easily fixed though.  Next time I'll get an m48 extension and screw that in.

Aurora was pretty nuts.  The vast majority of it just looked like light pollution to the eye.  As mentioned it made observing by eye extremely challenging.  Pleiades was gone for a lot of it.

However about half nine there was some incredibly intense red/green aurora which I observed from my north facing chunt.  In my attempts to setup my tripod in the toilet (including extending the legs by apparently swearing at them) I managed to get some pictures, wake up my wife and my 9 year old daughter.

My daughter was absolutely delighted by the light show though so all worth it.

[Johnny81]

First reasonably clear evening in almost a week - carried on with some more double stars in Camelopardalis with the highlight being the two for the price of one STF 618 & STF 617 (both in the same FOV at x133). Some clouds rolled in and I stopped after only a short session. By 21:15 I called the missis outside to look up.. of course the Aurora stole the show! Her phone camera picked up quite a lot of detail (red streaking) and my failing old Samsung model not so much.....

[Elara]

2 hours ago, Paul M said:

I'd say it was at least as intense as last May's big auroral storm.

Here is my overnight timelapse from my remote alksky camera in Cumbria. I messed with the max exposure time early on so there is a bit of a glitch.

 

 

Super stuff!  - thank you sharing. Whereabouts in Cumbria?

[inedible_hulk]

Having the first clear night with passable skies in a good while, I had planned a good session with the Starfield, but the aurora changed my plans,

Popped down the mere earlier in the evening as there’s a large reasonably dark northern and eastern horizon there. The aurora was maybe faintly visible to the eye at times, but clearly visible on my phone camera.

Returned home for dinner, and stepping outside around 10pm to set up for a shorter observing session, I noticed the western sky ablaze with a deep pinky red, clearly visible to the eye.

Ended up with a shorter session with the ST80 with its new upgraded focuser. Nice to be able to use my 2” eyepieces and accessories with this now and nice to have a smooth focuser to work with. Seeing at the zenith was good (M31 x22), but poor transparency was evident a lower altitudes (Saturn x133).

Couldn’t stay up beyond midnight, so missed the main event, but happy to have seen what I have having missed May’s event.

 

[Elp]

9 hours ago, AlcorAlly said:

Same here! For those who also saw the 10th of May display - was it even more spectacular? 

You could certainly see more detail by eye at around 1215, but the May 10th one lasted far longer.

[Mr_Cat]

On 20/09/2024 at 12:47, Mr_Cat said:

 Next time it will be power on, select align, let it do it's stuff for 2 mins and job done.

and it was... 
Powered on, hit align and it did it's stuff.
I'd moved the secondary mirror 2 days ago when I was seeing if my 925 could  be fitted with a hyperstar (it can't) so I spent a little while re-collimating it on Vega.
Then spent a bit of time refining the alignment between the starsense camera and my OTA - until eventually it was accurate enough to slew to a target and frame it with a 6mm eyepiece in.  
It then tracked very nicely so I spent a decent amount of time on Jupiter and Saturn (again)  before calling it a night and feeling very pleased with myself and looking forward to much longer darker nights with equipment that just works