Re: [APML] Auroral activity over New Mexico

[Philip Perkins <philip@astrocruise.com>]

>You lucky guys... I live at 44°25' North and have never had the least
>chance to observe one. Too bad weather was awful last week (Philip, are
>you there? Even though I live at the same latitude as Luberon and some
>500 km east, I was blessed with a very compact blanket of clouds :-(((

Hi Emanuelle,

Yes, I am in the south of France now, though not for much longer :-(
I am at almost the same latitude as you.  Shame about the clouds in Italy -
it was a truly spectacular display.  I have the photos back from the lab
and they came out pretty well considering what a rush I had to load the
camera and set everything up.  I have never attempted an Aurora photo
before so this was a sort of instantaneous enforced learning! :-)  I took
exposures between 5 seconds and 1 minute at f/4.  All of my PJM film was
chilled so I grabbed a roll of Kodak Royal Gold 400 which I had bought for
experimental purposes.  Even the 5 second exposures showed the Aurora
strongly, though I think the best exposure time was around 20 seconds.
Unfortunately my scanner is 1000 miles away and it will be about a week
before I can upload the photos to my web site.

>Besides, I live in a 650000-people city. Anybody think I could have 
>noticed anything from downtown such a "light swamp"?

This was so bright that you would have easily seen it from a city unless
you were in the vicinity of some powerful lighting.  Of course the effect
would be much less than from a dark sky site, but it would definitely have
been visible.  From my dark sky site it literally lit up the surrounding
landscape with a faint red glow.  It was a severe form of light pollution
in itself! :-)  I was shooting M65 / M66 at the time and even though this
was well outside the area of the Aurora, the sky background is slightly
fogged with the red glow.

--Philip
Philip Perkins - philip@astrocruise.com
Wiltshire UK & Luberon France
Astrocruise - http://www.astrocruise.com

--  APML Archives at <http://www.system.missouri.edu/apml/>  ---
                Unsubscribe at <majordomo@seds.org>