Aurora from Iceland

[Carole]

Very annoying that we missed that X class flare a couple of weeks before we went, and yesterday was reading about another CME giving aurora 2 days after we come home. 

Still can't grumble, but would have been nice to have seen a mega display.

Carole

[Tony G]

It seems like the person was only there for part of the 20 sec sub, but then why don't I get a trail of him/her walking into/out of the image?

Carole,

If you look closely enough, you can just about make out the figure walking into the centre of the image, and then they must have stopped for a few seconds, which has resulted in a more solid image of the person.

Very annoying that we missed that X class flare a couple of weeks before we went, and yesterday was reading about another CME giving aurora 2 days after we come home.

Still, if you think about it some parties go all that way and see nothing. So it must have been a great relief to see what you did.

Welcome back!

Tony G

[JohnP]

Excellent Carole & definitely one to cross off the 'old' bucket list... Was it really all that green....?  John

[Fay]

well the pictures are quite impressive, Carole,  you really were lucky to see anything.
Bit upsetting just to miss a good display, but that is how it is with the aurora, it doesn't play ball..................

[Carole]

Yes Tony, I spotted that afterwards and amended the post (see page one last post)

Actually on closer inspection there is a faint "trail" of the person getting into position

Was it really all that green....?

Not with the naked eye John, it was much paler, when only a small display you could mistake it for clouds. 
However when the display got stronger you could see the green and obviously normal clouds don't make all those patterns but it was not as green as in the images.  I guess that's imaging all over, more detail than the eye can see, and of course those of us who've never seen it expect it to look just like the images we've seen. 

Not sure what a really strong display after a CME would look like though as we missed that, as above.

I am hoping to get some more images sent to me by Ken Pearson's friend Ken Harrison (from Loughton AS) who went with us, as he stayed up all night on the Saturday and witnessed a really big display that happened when we had all gone to bed for an hour or so when it clouded up.  Typical!!!!
He managed to drag himself away at one point to get us all up out of bed, but by the time we got there it had died down somewhat. 

Carole

[Carole]

I've got a bunch of images that I took one after another, so am hoping to do a couple of time lapses, although not done that before.  Mike has offered to help if I can't manage to do it myself as he has some clever software.

Not quite sure how soon I will be able to sort it out as I arrived home to hear my mum is not well and might have to spend some time with her this week.  Just waiting to hear from my brother as to what is happening.

Carole

[Carole]

I've just uploaded the images to my desktop and for your info, the one with the Ghost person and the one with the curtains are 23 secs and 26 secs respectively, but the one showing the hotel was only 7 secs as the aurora got quite bright at that point.

I've also done a couple of time lapse animations using windows movie maker, but can't seem to upload VLC files to the forum, so have hosted them temporarily on my website.  They are approx 20 secs each with a gap of 20 secs (the wait for noise reduction in between):

Just click on the icons
http://www.caroleastronomy.webspace.virginmedia.com/page87.html

Carole

[Carole]

As stated above all of the images were straight out of the camera with no processing.  Unfortunately I have not had a chance to do any adjustments myself yet as when I arrived home I found my mum was ill and I have been looking after her ever since, so just using the laptop for internet.

Simon on UKAI has tweaked the colour balance for me as I agree they needed some adjustment.  
It also looks like I have captured the Corona Borealis through the aurora borealis, how cool is that.

Simon's colour balance of my aurora image:

[mickw]

Carole don't know what went wrong but......................



and very nice