Amber alert!

Auroral Crown

Today I received an email advising me of an Amber Aurora Alert.  Sadly, the clouds came rolling in from the North Sea, so no chance of spying the Auroral glow on our Northern Horizon.

This year we've yet to see any noctilucent clouds either, so recent atmospheric photographs of any kind are unavailable.  Luckily, whilst tidying up some old databases, I came across some unprocessed and unpublished images of the Aurora that we captured two years ago in Norway.

The above image was taken looking straight up into the centre of the circle of charged Nitrogen and Oxygen ions being channelled down along lines of magnetic force created by convection currents in the Earth's molten metallic core.

Last night was clear and with the Moon below our horizon, the stars shone bright.  I spent an hour with my 11x80mm binoculars.  The constellation Scorpius, for most of the year unobservable from our backyard, was  just visible above our southern horizon.  The red giant star Antares, Alpha Scorpii, could be seen twinkling over our neighbour's house roof.

I managed to spot a number of Globular Star Clusters including;  M13, M92 and M5.  It was also nice to explore the Milky Way streaming through the constellation Cygnus well up in the sky to the East.