I got a Red Alert from the UK for aurora at about 7:15 PM, local time. The sun would not set for another hour-and-a half or so, and astronomical twilight ended after 10 PM so I had little hope the show would still be going when it would be dark enough for us we could see it. But I alerted my son-in-law to the possiblity. (He had already seen his own email alert). At 9:47 he emailed me: "Hey, still planning on going out to shoot? Looks like the Auroral oval is getting pretty far south!" I took a look and emailed him back that I would pick him up in a few minutes.
We were in place by about 10:30 PM, as the crescent moon sunk low in the west, and got back a little after 1 AM. The aurora was very prominent when we got there. I could tell through my tinted windows as we drove to the dark spot that it was definitely visible. That was a large green (in images) mass and images showed a lot of red above it. It didn't seem to change a great deal, at least to the naked eye. My son-in-law, Ryan McGinnis (whose work will be featured in an upcoming Nebraskaland magazine) took a number of shots and then set his intervalometer up to take a series of 1 minute exposures. I know that I got one nice (but modest) red pillar in one shot, and had some fun shooting myself silhouetted against the aurora. It seemed to wane and then come back strong before waning again. Anytime you can see them from Nebraska, it is a treat. Photos tomorrow, hopefully. Darren Addy Kearney, Nebraska -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
