Aurora, March 2016
Arguably an even more impressive display of the Aurora this evening than the one over New Year. I took the Pen-F out for its first attempt at night photography. What a way to test its capabilities!
Category Archives: Astronomy
Seeing the New Year in with style
Over the course of New Year’s Eve I saw several aurora alerts. On checking, it was even visible as a pale grey band running above the neighbours’ houses, so I grabbed a camera and tripod and found a convenient path with a clear view to the north. This was taken at a minute past midnight […]
Out in the middle of nowhere
On a whim, a friend and I spent a few hours out in the middle of nowhere, Aberdeenshire – hunting aurora which totally failed to show, avoiding fog and pointing cameras sky-wards to see what could be seen. I quite liked the lights of a cow-byre against the mist, the Pleiades and Hyades star clusters […]
Aurora!
For the second time, I was lucky enough to see the aurora from Perth, last night. It was quite an impressive display; by the time I got out to darker skies it was quite low above the horizon, but the greens were strong to the naked eye and some strong rays came and went over […]
Moody Eclipse Photos
I was up early on the morning of March 20th to get to Stonehaven on the coast in time for the solar eclipse. It’s funny how there was so much discussion as to what filters one should use when shooting the sun: on the one hand, a direct view of the sun’s disc requires special […]
Solar Eclipse 2015: a teaser
After all that driving to get this, I couldn’t let today pass without posting taster shot from the solar eclipse. I find it interesting that, for all the posturing online about the need for Baader solar sheets and that ND filters wouldn’t provide enough protection, nature provided clouds as the best kind of filter anyway. The […]
Noctilucent Clouds
Noctilucent (“night-shining”) clouds are a rare phenomenon: the highest clouds in the atmosphere, at altitudes between 47-53 miles, consisting of tiny crystals of water ice about 100nm in diameter and requiring very cold temperatures to form. Not fully understood, they are a recently discovered meterological phenomenon with no record of their observation before 1885. They also […]
ISS
Two photos of the International Space Station passing overhead.