Our Sun begins to leave its solar minimum stage in its eleventh year of sun spot activity and is becoming more active. A reasonably strong coronal mass ejection was detected on August 1st, 2010 by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
The size of the event had been grossly exaggerated by the media but I still hoped to image some weak Southern Lights and headed down to Cape Schanck as soon as heavy clouds went away. The slight pink glow visible in the image could just be a very weak Aurora.
Bright Venus produced a nice path of light on the water with Mars and Saturn nearby. The night was cold and humid but the camera kept clicking…
Although there was not much of Aurora show that night, the Milky Way, low flying clouds and passing ships made it up on this time lapse:
This cycle of Sun activity appears to be promising so I’ll keep trying…
Spectacular video even if you didn’t catch this years best aurora (so far). I did, but I’m in Antarctica
Even then we missed the best part of it (daylight).
What camera you are using for these time-lapse movies?
Thanks, Tom.
I haven’t seen Aurora Australis yet but this cycle of Sun activity is shaping up to be quite promising. I wish I could travel to Antarctica as easily as I can to Cape Schanck
I do time lapses with Nikon D700 with 14-24mm f/2.8 lens.
Cheers,
Alex
Thanks Alex. I asked because I’m looking to upgrade my Canon 30D next year, it’s starting to show it’s age compared to the newer models. Far too noisy at high ISO. I’m probably going to have to stick with Canon (5D Mk III perhaps?) for now as I’ve already invested far too much in Canon lenses to jump ship, but I must admit that Nikon models do seem to take a better photo. May have something to do with the photographer too
A friend of mine does similar time lapse animations with 5DMKII and I don’t think there is much difference between it and Nikon D700 when you downsize the images to 1920×1080 pixels.