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Sunday October 21, 2001 Each time I go out, God seems to one-up my last time out. I can truly say I have seen an AURORA. When Rodger and I arrived at Greasy Ridge to setup it was about 6:30 p.m. The Moon was just under 1st quarter. There was a cloud front to the north that was illuminated by the Moon, but the clouds did not extend beyond 5 degrees. We could see the top stars in the bowl of the Big Dipper. As the Sun set, I thought I noticed a red glow in the area of the Big Dipper, but assumed it was Sun light reflecting off of some high altitude clouds and the Moon light did not help diagnose the source. Rodger was sharing some great views of NGC open clusters early in the night (he has the numbers). I was shooting some CCD images of the Moon, polar aligning, and getting my new STV and Efinder ready for its first night of auto-guiding (I did finally figure this one out.) The Moon set around 10:15 p.m. and the sky transparency improved dramatically. Rodger directed me to look north at about 10:45 p.m. and WOW! Yes, this show was the "real deal" with reds, blues, curtains, and pillars! The pillars were easily reaching 30 degrees into the sky, well into Auriga and past Capella. I quickly took my camera off of the scope and loaded it onto Rodger’s binocular tripod. I hope the images come out. The event lasted for at least 10 minutes. The colors were quite intense at times and there was no doubt about seeing them very clearly. A couple of the pillars were quite wide, spanning about 3-4 degrees in width and reaching high into the sky. We agreed that this sight made the night well worth our efforts to get out. After the Aurora show, we settled back in for observing/photography. After some initial frustration, I figured out how to get the Efinder to work as an auto-guider. This unit totally replaces my guidescope. The unit is the STV head with a 4" extension tube with focal reducer. The STV was guiding at 1.3 arc seconds of error, which is very satisfactory. I hope the image of the double cluster comes out well. The unit has many great features as an auto-guider and is an improvement over the gold standard ST4. Rodger and the Obsession provided some excellent views. My two favorite views were of the Dumbbell and of Saturn. The Dumbbell in the 20" with the UHC filter was very extended beyond the traditional dumbbell shape you see in photos. I believe Rodger was showcasing his new 9mm Nagler for both of these objects, yielding more than 250x. Saturn had moments of mind-blowing detail. The ring structure had several divisions that were noted. I really need to bone-up on my Saturn observing knowledge with scopes like this around. It was a great way to end the night. We packed it in and left Greasy Ridge at 1:00 a.m. Hope to see you at a dark sky in November!
Links to the aurora photos follow |