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Posted

Was out imaging last night and saw the light show (in southern Finland). Was incredibly strong for a good while, maybe for as long as an hour. Not quite as strong as the massive flare a few weeks back but still a proper show with some naked eye red visible too. Occasional pulses of light at the zenith too. Didn't take any presentable quality images but found it curious that it effected my 8'' newtonian imaging with a fairly narrow 1.5 degree field of view. Below is all of the nights data plotted in Siril with background intensity:

Auroragradient.JPG.c640496ec13f573fc747bcec36608ea9.JPG

The big mountain that sees more than a doubling of the background electron rate is not cloud, its the Aurora! This turned the location temporarily from a roughly SQM 20.8 location to an SQM 19.9 location (according to ASTAP measurements). The most surprising thing here is that i was imaging M81, which was very close to the zenith at the time, so there was aurora skyglow all over the place.

 

Posted

@ONIKKINEN Were you at Porkala, Oskari? I went there last night but had a bunch of gremlins, guide scope kept disconnecting and autorun well, wouldn't autorun.  Final straw was tablet battery not charging due to cold, so packed up and went back at 10-30 with only a handful of subs. Spent most of night looking at tablet or mount trying to get stuff working so missed aurora

Great place though,  bortle way better than in Lauttasaari, I'll be back hopefully while still some astronomical dark :)  

Posted
5 hours ago, 900SL said:

@ONIKKINEN Were you at Porkala, Oskari? I went there last night but had a bunch of gremlins, guide scope kept disconnecting and autorun well, wouldn't autorun.  Final straw was tablet battery not charging due to cold, so packed up and went back at 10-30 with only a handful of subs. Spent most of night looking at tablet or mount trying to get stuff working so missed aurora

Great place though,  bortle way better than in Lauttasaari, I'll be back hopefully while still some astronomical dark :)  

I was in the other end of the lot to you, did wonder why someone left so early with so good weather. Did have some technical issues at first too, i think i was barely running smoothly by the time you left. Seeing turned out excellent towards the end of the night (2" stars) so stayed until 05 myself.

That cold charge protection thing has caught me off guard a couple of times, try putting it inside your jacket and sweater (or whatever layer) for a while. My tablet recovers to a point where it starts charging in a few minutes.

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