# 49 | Auroral Intensity

Anyone with clear skies on the evening of Saturday, September 7, 2002 most likely witnessed the spectacular aurora that occured. Peaking between 9-9:50pm EDT, the aurora was seen as far south as Georgia.

Pierre Martin reports "I was lucky enough to be located under the very dark skies of the Reserve Faunique La Verendrye in Quebec (located north-west of Maniwaki) on that special night. These auroras were the best and most vivid that I've seen in this current solar cycle. The rapidly moving curtains and bright colors 'wowed' the 30 or so of us amateur astronomers who were gathered together under the night skies".

Pierre used a Minolta SRT-101 camera, a 58mm lens at f2.8 and Fuji Superia 800 film with an exposure time of 12 seconds.

# 48 | Shooting the Moon

Digital cameras have enticed many who were not astrophotographers into trying photography and then winning them over with the ease of the results that are achieved.

Upon reading "Shooting the Moon" (Sept/Oct 2000), Tom Luker of Peterborough, Ontario asked and received a Sony DSC-P1 digital camera for Christmas. After making a home-made coupling device, he began shooting the Moon through his 130mm SkyWatcher reflector and took this shot on September 11, 2002.

# 47 | The Dumbbell Nebula

Located 900 light-years away in the constellation Vulpecula, the Dumbell Nebula, also known as M27, can be seen as a small, fuzzy oval-shaped object in smaller telescopes.

While at Starfest 2002, Drew Patterson took this image through his CG-11 F10 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope.
Drew manually guided his CG-11 with a 90mm ETX telescope for 30 minutes and used Kodak E-200 slide film pushed 2x.

# 46 | High Altitude Aurora

Auroras most commonly appear to our eyes as either green or red. Film, being more sensitive then our eyes, will record colours that at the time were unable to be seen.

On August 19, 2002, while about 40 kilometres north-west of Quebec City, Dominic Cantin noticed a faint glow on the horizon. To his surprise, upon developing the film, he found that the aurora was captured as a purple glow.

Auroral colour depends on the altitude that the aurora is occurring at. Green and red auroras occur near the bottom and middle area of our ionosphere while blue and purple occur in the higher regions.

Dominic used a 28mm lens at f2.8 and Fuji 800 film to take this 25 second exposure shot. He lit the trees in the foreground with a brief blast from his flashlight.

# 45 | The North American Nebula

Named for its obvious shape, the North American Nebula, also known as NGC 7000, is best observed from an area devoid of any light pollution.

Located a few degrees east of Deneb (the tail of Cygnus the Swan or the northern-most star of the Summer Triangle), because of it's size it is best viewed with binoculars or a rich-field telescope. Appearing as a hazy grey patch, one hint for finding the nebula is to look for the Gulf of Mexico.

Brady Johnson of Waterloo, Ontario took images from two different locations over the course of a week and combined them later to make this beautiful composite image. Brady used an SBIG ST8 ccd camera with a CFW8 filter wheel and a JWA-PK Pentax lens adapter using a 135mm Pentax SMC-M lens. Raw data was processed in AIP4Win and Photoshop.

# 44 | Majestic Meteors

Many skywatchers sat under the stars on August 11th, 12th or 13th hoping to see the annual Perseid meteor shower.

While reports indicate that the shower was more intense over Europe than Canada, those who stayed up to watch the show weren't disappointed.

Gordon Bertrand & Cindy McPherson of Antigonish, Nova Scotia report that "although this year's shower didn't produce as many meteors as last year, we still managed to observe about 20 per hour. Two particularly good meteors produced very large fireballs and subsequent trails which stretched from the point of origin to just above our visible horizon!"

Gordon and Cindy used a Miranda Sensorex camera equipped with a 50mm f1.8 lens and Konica Centuria 800 film for this 5 minute exposure taken early in the morning of August 13th.

# 43 | The Perseid Aurora Shower

Those that were attempting to watch Perseid meteors on August 12/02 had a bit of a distraction: an aurora lit up the sky which hindered meteor observations.

Lance Taylor of Edmonton, Alberta was observing from the Edmonton RASC's Cooking Lake/Blackfoot observing area when this aurora suddenly developed shortly after 1:00am. Lance reports that although the aurora limited the number of meteors that could be seen that night, he still observed 48 Perseids.

Lance used a Canon T-70 camera equipped with a 28mm lens set a f2 and took a 30 second exposure using Kodak 200 speed film.

# 42 | Aurora Party

Those that attended British Columbia's Mount Kobau Star Party on the night of August 3/4th were treated to a beautiful auroral display.

Sayuri Kubota and Richard Fortier took many shots with their Sony Cyber-shot DSC-F707 digital camera with this colourful 30 second image being the best.

The camera was set at f2, using the 400 speed setting.

# 41 | Cheap Shots

This photo of Sagittarius and the Milky Way is quite similiar to our Photo of the Week #39 except for one thing: the duration of the shot.

Stewart Hill of Kelowna, British Columbia, used a barndoor tracker to take this 4-minute shot on July 10, 2002.

Using a barndoor tracker is an inexpensive, yet successful way to take photographs up to 5 mintues in duration. Stewart built his from scrap wood with the only expense being $2 for bolts and nuts.

Photo details:

Canon AV-1 camera with a 28mm lens set a f2.8 using Fuji Superia 400 film.

# 40 | The Swan in the Stars

The constellation Cygnus the Swan, also known as the Northern Cross, can be seen directly overhead at midnight flying through the Milky Way.

This area of the nightsky is a stargazer's delight as it contains objects such as the North American Nebula (the red patch near top left) and the Cygnus Star Cloud (centre).

For a detailed chart on exploring this area of our galaxy, see page 22 in the July/August issue of SkyNews.

Brett Zimmerman used a wide-angle lens to take this 4-minute piggybacked shot with a Pentax MG camera equipped with Fuji Superia 1600 film from the North Bruce Peninsula in Southern Ontario on July 10, 2002.