Here was the light show at the house in Upstate NY. Was nice enough out for a couple hours to see something, but it got cloudy around midnight and has been rainy and cloudy all day today.
Wow... great pics. I can only imagine how people hundreds of years ago would think about this kind of thing... first eclipses, now magical lights in the skies...
I played a gig last night and got home around 1:30AM. Just happened to read an article on my phone before I packed up, saying the prime viewing in Nebraska was between midnight and 4:00. The colors weren’t as spectacular to the naked eye, because we are just above the boundary for visibility. But our cameras picked it up really well.
Happy Mother’s Day you mothers! Made my mom a kick ass prime rib dinner tonight, because tomorrow night my sister is hosting us for dinner, which is bound to be somewhat experimental and flavourless.
My father in law used to research the Aurora up in the far north of Sweden back in the 1960s. They needed a special camera to be able to capture images of the aurora. The camera cost over 200,000 dollars in today's money, and now we can just grab pictures on a thing we keep in our pocket.
I was on the astrophotography Reddit a while ago, and was reading about telescopes, and learning that what you see in a telescope is nowhere near as spectacular as stacked photos and edited pictures…but that actually seeing a planet in detail through the viewfinder is still an amazing experience. The Aurora was like that. It might not have been bursting with color, but you can see it shimmer and see the lines stretching over the sky, the stars disappearing from the light. It was really cool.
I used to work for a company that made and sold telescopes and astrophotography equipment, and boy were people surprised that things didn't look the same in their 200 dollar telescope as hubble images. Our view here we actually could see the pinks and greens pretty well with tghe naked eye. It was fantastic.
I laid in and about fell asleep in that hammock for awhile last night and didn't get to see any action. I might just sleep out there tomorrow for fun though. The temp outside was that perfect temp and humidity where you can't even feel the air. No coolness, no warmth, just perfect.
We could see the colors, almost like it was more noticeable in the spots where you weren’t actively looking.
Yes, this is true in amateur astronomy, you always look more from the corner of your eye, or at an angle to see faint things. We often forget that the very center of our vision is blocked by the optic nerve.
which is why when you're looking for "needle in a haystack" things, like a dropped screw on the floor or your dick, you always scan back and forth and use your peripheral vision
Unless you wear special glasses. That’s how I enjoyed pool parties back in my younger days. I just got tired of people asking why I was in the shallow end with a welding mask on.