Conjunctions, Satellites & Auroras, Oh My!

Friday the 13th Aurora Title

October has brought clear skies and some fine celestial sights. Here’s a potpourri of what was up from home.

We’ve enjoyed some lovely early autumn weather here in southern Alberta, providing great opportunities to see and shoot a series of astronomical events.

Conjunctions

Venus & Mars in Close Conjunction #2 (Oct 5, 2017) — Venus and Mars in close conjunction in the dawn sky on October 5, 2017. Venus is the brightest object; Mars is below it; while the star above Venus is 4th magnitude Sigma Leonis. The foreground is illuminated by light from the setting Full Moon in the west. This is a single 1-second exposure with the 135mm lens at f/2 and Canon 60Da at ISO 800.

On October 5, Venus and Mars appeared a fraction of a degree apart in the dawn twilight. Venus is the brightest object, just above dimmer but red Mars. This was one of the closest planet conjunctions of 2017. Mars will appear much brighter in July and August 2018 when it makes its closest approach to Earth since 2003.

Satellites: The Space Station

Overhead Pass of the Space Station in Moonlight — An overhead pass of the ISS on October 5, 2017, with the Full Moon rising in the east at left. The ISS is moving from west (at right) to east (at left), passing nearly overhead at the zenith at centre. North is at the top, south at bottom in this fish-eye lens image with an 8mm Sigma fish-eye lens on the Canon 6D MkII camera. This is a stack of 56 exposures, each 4 seconds long at an interval of 1 second.

The Space Station made a series of ideal evening passes in early October, flying right overhead from my site at latitude 51° N. I captured it in a series of stacked still images, so it appears as a dashed line across the sky. In reality it looks like a very bright star, outshining any other natural star. Here, it appears to fly toward the rising Moon.

Satellites: Iridiums

Twin Iridium Satellite Flares (October 9, 2017) — A pair of nearly simultaneous and parallel Iridium satellite flares, on October 9, 2017, as they descended into the north. The left or westerly flare was much brighter and with a sharp rise and fall in brightness. While it was predicted to be mag. -4.4 I think it got much brighter, perhaps mag -7, but very briefly. These are Iridium 90 (left) and Iridium 50 (right). This is a stack of 40+ exposures each, 2 seconds at 1-second intervals, with the Sigma 24mm lens at f/1.4 and Nikon D750 at ISO 6400.

Often appearing brighter than even the ISS, Iridium satellite flares can blaze brighter than even Venus at its best. One did so here, above, in another time-lapse of a pair of Iridium satellites that traveled in parallel and flared at almost the same time. But the orientation of the reflective antennas that create these flares must have been better on the left Iridium as it really shot up in brilliance for a few seconds.

Auroras

Aurora and Circumpolar Star Trails (Oct, 13, 2017) — A circumpolar star trail composite with Northern Lights, on October 13, 2017, shot from home in southern Alberta. The Big Dipper is at bottom centre; Polaris is at top centre at the axis of the rotation. The bottom edge of the curtains are rimmed with a pink fringe from nitrogen. This is a stack of 200 frames taken mostly when the aurora was a quiescent arc across the north before the substorm hit. An additional single exposure is layered in taken about 1 minute after the main star trail set to add the final end point stars after a gap in the trails. Stacking was with the Advanced Stacker Plus actions using the Ultrastreaks mode to add the direction of motion from the tapering trails. Each frame is 3 seconds at f/2 and ISO 6400 wth the Sigma 14mm lens and Nikon D750.

Little in the sky beats a fine aurora display and we’ve had several of late, despite the Sun being spotless and nearing a low ebb in its activity. The above shot is a composite stack of 200 images, showing the stars circling the celestial pole above the main auroral arc, and taken on Friday the 13th.

Aurora from October 13, 2013 — A decent aurora across the north from home in southern Alberta, on Friday the 13th, October, 2017, though these frames were taken after midnight MDT. 3 seconds at f/2 and ISO 6400 wth the Sigma 14mm lens and Nikon D750.

This frame, from some 1300 I shot this night, October 13, captures the main auroral arc and a diffuse patch of green above that pulsed on and off.

You can see the time-lapse here in my short music video on Vimeo.

Friday the 13th Aurora from Alan Dyer on Vimeo.

It’s in 4K if your monitor and computer are capable. It nicely shows the development of the aurora this night, from a quiescent arc, through a brief sub-storm outburst, then into pulsing and flickering patches. Enjoy!

What all these scenes have in common is that they were all shot from home, in my backyard. It is wonderful to live in a rural area and to be able to step outside and see these sites easily by just looking up!

5 Replies to “Conjunctions, Satellites & Auroras, Oh My!”

justpat1 says:

December 2, 2017 at 10:23 pm

The Iridium flares will no longer be visible by the end of 2018, so catch as many as you can. SpaceX is launching another 10 replacement sv’s in a few weeks to break the 1/2 way point for Iridium constellation upgrade. The pass you saw/photographed could have been two block 1 satellites flying tandem to compensate for aging components. Rare scenario.

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Marla Johnson says:

October 16, 2017 at 4:52 pm

Hi Alan. I really enjoy your beautiful pictures! I am from the Midwest having been born and grown up in Indiana where my older brother and I would spend many hours looking thru his telescope where he taught me the names of the constellations and planets. I also lived in Iowa for many years and now live in Bellingham, WA, near the San Juan Islands. Nights are usually cloudy here on the coast and your pictures of the big wide clear skies at night in Alberta bring back happy memories of the big wide clear skies in the Midwest. Thank you for sharing the beauty of nature with others! Marla Johnson

Lenore Klausner says:

October 16, 2017 at 4:50 pm

Thank you for sharing, Alan.You are blessed to have that amazing sky in your own backyard. I never understood how sad light pollution is until I visited Churchill and took my very first photograph of the night sky. Here in the suburbs of Chicago, even on a clear night, I’m lucky to see any stars at all 😦
~Lenore

1. Alan Dyer says:
  
  October 16, 2017 at 5:00 pm
  
  Hi! Looks like my Feb sessions at CNSC are sold out already! I hope the weather is cold and clear, unlike last January’s first group when the weather was unusually warm but cloudy. The first clouded out group in many many years,