Click here to check out my photos of a great Northern Lights display near Tromsø on October 12, 2023!
Here's a quick summary of my suggestions and tips for taking photos of auroras on a cruise.
What apps will tell me if auroras are visible?
There are many out there, most pull info from the same sources. "Live Aurora Network" is not free, but it provides real-time sighting information and sky images from multiple locations, and it will send you alerts when there is auroral activity. SpaceWeatherLive and the Glendale App use more scientific data that some people might find difficult to interpret.
What's the best way to take photos of auroras?
The two most critical things are finding ways to steady your camera and to take manual control of settings if possible. You'll need to take exposures of several seconds in the dark, and the autofocus on cameras can easily get confused by auroras.
It's helpful if you have a tripod or...
Spring can be a dull season for casual, naked-eye stargazing in the Northern Hemisphere. Broad stretches of the sky are devoid of bright stars. Dim constellations completely disappear for an observer within or near a city. For the astrophotographer, though, it’s Galaxy Season. The Virgo and Coma superclusters of galaxies, completely invisible to the naked-eye, make for rich hunting in the telescope.
It’s a rare treat for a North Carolina astrophotographer to have two clear, moonless nights in the same April week. I tried to make the most of the opportunity by imaging two contrasting galaxies.
First up is galaxy NGC 2403, in the constellation Camelopardalis (the Giraffe). NGC 2403 is a “flocculent” – fluffy – spiral galaxy. Its arms are alive with bright clumps, which are sites of active star formation. NGC 2403 is about 57 million light years from Earth.
On the evening of April 12, I imaged the “Needle Galaxy,” NGC 4565. The Needle was the cover story for the...
You need a strong tolerance for chaos to survive serious astrophotography. I lost nearly two years while troubleshooting an issue, which I thought was with my telescope, but turned out to be a power supply. Suddenly, there was a six-month period where things seemed relatively stable. And then, Windows decided to explode on my laptop, requiring a complete reinstall -- none of the backups worked!
I had to reinstall and reconfigure all of my apps and get them talking to the finicky hardware again. Four hours under the sky one night verified that everything was more or less functional again. Then I had to wait for the next clear, moonless night for my chosen target -- the Hidden Galaxy, IC 342.
Located in the constellation Camelopardalis, IC 342 lies right along the Milky Way's equator. That means we are looking out through the disk of the Milky Way at this galaxy -- our galaxy would appear edge-on to them. Lying along the...
IC 2177, popularly known as the "Seagull Nebula," is a region of dust clouds, emission nebulas, reflection nebulas, and star clusters that lies along the border between the constellations Canis Major and Monoceros. It appears to have formed as the result of at least three separate supernova explosions over the past six million years. The shock waves from the explosions are pushing interstellar gas and dust together, triggering star formation.
An interesting feature is bow shock wave around the star at far right. Data from the GAIA space mission shows that this is a runaway star, traveling at high speed. It was likely ejected from an open cluster by a nearby supernova explosion one million years ago. The shock wave results from it slamming into the nebulous region at high speed.
Imaged on the evening of 13 February 2023 from Summerfield, NC (Bortle 4/5), using Explore Scientific 127mm FCD-100 APO refractor with field flattener/reducer, EQ6-R Pro mount, cooled ZWO ASI1600MM camera and...
Our February/March 2020 cruise on the Viking Star was a fantastic trip. In addition to meeting some great people and enjoying the stunning scenery, we also achieved our primary goal, which was to experience the Northern Lights.
Of course, we returned to a world changed by the COVID-19 lockdown, but I didn't let that prevent me from sharing our experiences with the Greensboro Astronomy Club via Zoom on Friday, April 20. I recorded the presentation and am happy to provide the link to the video below.
My talk opens with a brief discussion of the Northern Lights in history and our attempts to understand what causes them. The primary purpose, though, was to answer the question that I took with me to Norway: What does it really look like to be under the Northern Lights? Hopefully, this presentation will answer that question, as it includes more than 100 images that I captured with my iPhone in Night Mode over several night's worth...
We docked at Tromsø on Tuesday morning. The main part of the city sits on a small island, one that is relatively densely populated for this part of the world. The city and its environs have about 130,000 inhabitants and is the world’s third largest city north of the Arctic Circle. They call it “The Paris of the North” because it is relatively cosmopolitan. Foreigners make up 10% of the population, and it’s a major hub of Arctic scientific research.
It was from here that Roald Amundsen and Fridtjof Nansen set off on their polar expeditions in the late 1800s and early 1900s. We learned about their voyages in a visit to the Polar Museum. It’s almost impossible to imagine the hardships suffered by these explorers and others who tried to make their living in the Arctic back in those days.
Marking a quite different era in Tromsø’s cultural history is the Arctic Cathedral, which opened in 1965. It’s a soaring aluminum...
Our first scheduled port call at Stavanger was two days ago, but it was canceled due to high winds. That meant an extra sea day, and a chance to relax and watch the Norwegian coast slip by as we sailed north.
The Order of the Blue Nose
Yesterday was a scheduled sea day. The highlight was a 3 pm ceremony for bestowing “The Order of the Blue Nose.” It’s one of those seafaring traditions stretching back at least 100 years - an initiation for sailors crossing the Arctic Circle for the first time. I had heard that on Viking’s cruises up the coast of Norway, passengers are invited to immerse themselves in a jacuzzi filled with ice water as part of the ritual. It’s voluntary, of course, and I debated with myself as to whether or not I would do it. Finally I decided that I would do it in honor of my dad, my former father-in-law Al Friedrich, and the other...
Sometimes the happiest results happen by accident. This is the story of how I unintentionally managed to image a small, distant asteroid with my Nikon camera and a wide-angle lens!
Shooting Orion with a Guided CameraSaturday night, January 5, 2019 brought North Carolina the first clear skies in what seemed like ages. I planned to shoot some nebulas with my telescope and specialized camera. But tonight I also wanted to try out a new wide-angle lens I recently purchased, a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens for my Nikon D5500. My goal was to point the Nikon at Orion and see how much detail I could capture if I kept shooting exposures as long as I was in the field.
I set up the Nikon on my iOptron SkyTracker Pro mount and a sturdy tripod. The SkyTracker is a motorized one-axis equatorial mount. Simply put, once you've pointed it at the celestial pole, it will follow the Earth's rotation all night long. This prevents...
The rollout of "Bringing Columbia Home" took a lot more of my time and energy than I anticipated! It has been a wild, wonderful ride. But it has taken me away from updating my personal blog.
In between book-related events, I've been getting back into astrophotography, in a big way. Last summer's eclipse whetted my appetite for getting a telescope and trying my hand at taking photos of the night sky.
In the coming weeks and months, I intend to be much more regular in posting the results of my efforts, and passing along some of the tricks I have learned along the way. It's not a hobby for the faint of heart or people who are easily frustrated. Let me leave it at that for the time being.
In the meantime, here are a select few of some of my shots taken at a July 2018 star party at Mayo River State Park, North Carolina. In order, they're the Swan Nebula (also...
As I noted in a recent blog entry, I witnessed a total solar eclipse in 1970 when I was thirteen years old. After that eclipse ended, I recall looking up the date of the next total eclipse in the eastern US. Monday, August 21, 2017. Wow, that seemed impossibly far in the future. I would never be here for that.
But 2017 finally came around.
Dad Sweats the Plans
My excitement level began to rise over the summer. I originally planned to play it by ear on eclipse day. As the media began to forecast potentially millions of people traveling to see the eclipse, I realized the safest bet would be to book two hotel rooms in the middle of the path of totality in South Carolina. That would get us into position the night before the eclipse and enable us to drive either northwest or southeast to seek better weather if need be. I booked two rooms at the Hampton Inn in...
