clouds

On a cloudy night

Posted on by Patrick
Lighthing on the horizon

The auro­ra fore­cast was great, but the earth­ly fore­cast was clouds, clouds, clouds. I ven­tured out any­way, hop­ing against hope for a small break in the clouds.

On the back road I chose, there were clouds all around, and lightning—lots of it—to the south and east. I did­n’t hear any thun­der, but there were moments where the clouds lit up from with­in. I man­aged to get one bright bolt in focus.

Lighthing on the horizon
Lightning
A clos­er look

Look­ing up, I saw that there was indeed a break in the clouds, just large enough for Jupiter to shine through. If you view the pho­to full-size, you’ll see two moons as well: Cal­lis­to on the left and Ganymede on the right (if I’m using this tool correctly).

Jupiter, with Callisto and Ganymede visible

Then, before head­ing home, I decid­ed to take a cou­ple shots of the north­ern sky. There was a hint of green to it. This is the best pho­to I man­aged of the auro­ra try­ing to peek through the clouds.

Clouds with a bit of auroral green

And then I went home.

Clouded Aurora

Posted on by Patrick

After I watched the new Top Gun talkie, I checked the data in my auro­ra app while I was still in the park­ing lot. It looked good[1]The Bz read­ing was ‑11, where the fur­ther into the neg­a­tive, the bet­ter; I usu­al­ly see a decent show if it’s at ‑4 or so., so I hur­ried home, grabbed my gear, and went out of town.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly it was cloudy to the north. I set up any­way, hop­ing the clouds would move off, and start­ed snap­ping photos.

Long sto­ry short: the clouds did­n’t move off. I gave it about 45 min­utes, and then packed up and went home.

Here’s a time­lapse of about 20 min­utes’ worth of my attempts. Each frame is a 10-sec­ond exposure. 

And here’s a hand­ful of my favourites from the pho­tos I got. (I think I caught a mete­or in the first one, on the far left.)

Foot­notes

Foot­notes
↑1 The Bz read­ing was ‑11, where the fur­ther into the neg­a­tive, the bet­ter; I usu­al­ly see a decent show if it’s at ‑4 or so.

Clouds

Posted on by Patrick
Clouds in the afternoon

I made a time­lapse video of the clouds while we were at the farm last week­end. It’s about an hour, with pho­tos snapped every 10 seconds.

And since it turned out so well, I did anoth­er one yes­ter­day, out my upstairs win­dow. Longer this time—there are about 4½ hours of clouds in this one.