Unexpected Aurora and a Double Cluster (Rob Foster)

Contains: Northern lights

Unexpected Aurora and a Double Cluster

Tucked in for the night, an email alert popped up that aurora activity might be worth getting out of bed for, and two hours later, I went back to bed. Not an overwhelming naked eye Northern Lights, though you could see the basal green glow and an occasional vertical spike. Still, it always looks better on the captured image, and this was perhaps my favorite of at least the ones that had few satellite trails and roundish stars at 20s. The rule of 500 is an approximation even at 14 mm and an 1.6 crop factor, which predicted 22 seconds would give round stars but I think the 15 second images were better for the stars, though worse for the aurora. Looking forward to having being able to use a portable star tracker (on backorder but at least on order) for these events. The next night's forecast even better with a G2 event from a combination of coronal hole high speed streams and the coronal mass ejection earlier this week. In this particular image, I was able to capture the Perseus double cluster (upper right).

Camera Lens Astrophotography
N.I.N.A. Users
Aurora Borealis

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Unexpected Aurora and a Double Cluster

Unexpected Aurora and a Double Cluster

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