Auroral Arc with Pink Pillars (April 16, 2021)

A classic arc of aurora borealis showing pink pillars and an upper red glow above the main arc. The Kp was 5 this night but with the Bz often north. Early in the evening the aurora appeared as a bright but mostly featureless arc and was visible even in the twilight. This shows the display just before midnight, as it brightened and danced with structure in a brief substorm outburst. A thin STEVE arc appeared shortly afterwards. This is a single 10-second untracked exposure with the TTArtisan 11mm full-frame fish-eye lens wide open at f/2.8 on the Canon EOS Ra camera at ISO 6400 (the lens is only for mirrorless cameras and does not transmit lens metadata to the camera).

Panorama of the Milky Way-less Spring Sky (with Labels)

A 360° all-sky panorama of the northern spring sky with the Milky Way as absent from the sky as it can get for the year and from my latitude of 51° N. I shot this April 14/15, 2021 about 12:30 to 1 am MDT with the North Galactic Pole (NGP) in Coma Berenices due south and as high as it gets. So we are looking up out of the plane of the Galaxy, placing the band of the Milky Way along the horizon, visible here only as an arc low across the north at top, where it is obscured by the glow of Northern Lights that appeared this night. South is at bottom; north at top. West is to the right; east to the left. Zenith is at centre. I have added labels to this version. The Big Dipper is directly overhead at the zenith in the centre of the image. Polaris is above centre high in the north, close to the North Celestial Pole (NCP). Arcturus is the brightest star in the spring skly, and is here below centre and below the handle of the Dipper. Spica is at bottom low in the south. Castor and Pollux in Gemini are low in the west, the last of the winter stars setting. Capella in Auriga is at top right in the northwest, circumpolar from my latitude. Regulus in Leo is at bottom right high in the southwest. Flanking Leo are the naked-eye star clusters Melotte 111 (east, left, of Leo) in Coma Berenices, and M44, the Beehive (west, right, of Leo) in Cancer. Vega and Deneb are rising in the east at left, heralding the arrival of the summer stars. The head of Scorpius is just rising low in the southeast at bottom left, but Antares had not yet risen. While the aurora is prominent there was very little airglow banding apparent this night. It was a very clear transparent night. I shot this for book illustrations. This is a multi-segment panorama made of 24 segments (3 tiers of 8 each) for the sky, all tracked on the Star Adventurer 2i tracker, blended with a tier of 8 segments, untracked for the ground, masked in and aligned to the tracked segments. All were 45-second exposures at f/2.8 with the Sigma 24mm Art lens on the Nikon D750 at ISO 1600. Stitching was with PTGui which required a lot of tedious manual assigning of control points in adjacent images to get sky segments to align. It did not perform well automatically for this scene. And finding matching stars was tough as the spring sky contains so few bright stars and notable patterns to match up. The original is 15,000 pixels square.

Panorama of the Milky Way-less Spring Sky

A 360° all-sky panorama of the northern spring sky with the Milky Way as absent from the sky as it can get for the year and from my latitude of 51° N. I shot this April 14/15, 2021 about 12:30 to 1 am MDT with the North Galactic Pole (NGP) in Coma Berenices due south and as high as it gets. So we are looking up out of the plane of the Galaxy, placing the band of the Milky Way along the horizon, visible here only as an arc low across the north at top, where it is obscured by the glow of Northern Lights that appeared this night. South is at bottom; north at top. West is to the right; east to the left. Zenith is at centre. The Big Dipper is directly overhead at the zenith in the centre of the image. Polaris is above centre high in the north, close to the North Celestial Pole (NCP). Arcturus is the brightest star in the spring skly, and is here below centre and below the handle of the Dipper. Spica is at bottom low in the south. Castor and Pollux in Gemini are low in the west, the last of the winter stars setting. Capella in Auriga is at top right in the northwest, circumpolar from my latitude. Regulus in Leo is at bottom right high in the southwest. Flanking Leo are the naked-eye star clusters Melotte 111 (east, left, of Leo) in Coma Berenices, and M44, the Beehive (west, right, of Leo) in Cancer. Vega and Deneb are rising in the east at left, heralding the arrival of the summer stars. The head of Scorpius is just rising low in the southeast at bottom left, but Antares had not yet risen. While the aurora is prominent there was very little airglow banding apparent this night. It was a very clear transparent night. I shot this for book illustrations. This is a multi-segment panorama made of 24 segments (3 tiers of 8 each) for the sky, all tracked on the Star Adventurer 2i tracker, blended with a tier of 8 segments, untracked for the ground, masked in and aligned to the tracked segments. All were 45-second exposures at f/2.8 with the Sigma 24mm Art lens on the Nikon D750 at ISO 1600. Stitching was with PTGui which required a lot of tedious manual assigning of control points in adjacent images to get sky segments to align. It did not perform well automatically for this scene. And finding matching stars was tough as the spring sky contains so few bright stars and notable patterns to match up. The original is 15,000 pixels square.

Red Auroral Arc Panorama v2 (April 14, 2021)

A panorama of the auroral arc seen from home in southern Alberta (latitude 51° N) on April 14/15, 2021, showing a very red component above (to the south of?) the main green auroral arc low across the north. At right, it takes on a STEVE-like appearance. Is this an example of a SAR Arc -- a Sub-Auroral Red Arc? A brief sighting of a partial STEVE arc was reported this night but I missed it. The Kp level did go as high as 5 this night. This scene was about 12:30 am MDT April 15, 2021. By coincidence the arc of the Milky Way low across the north parallels the arc of the Northern Lights. Capella is at far left in the northwest; Vega is rising at right of centre in the northeast. This is a stitch of 4 segments, each untracked for 45 seconds at f/2.8 with the Sigma 24mm Art lens on the Nikon D750 at ISO 1600. Stitched with Adobe Camera Raw.

Red Auroral Arc Panorama v1 (April 14, 2021)

A panorama of the auroral arc seen from home in southern Alberta (latitude 51° N) on April 14/15, 2021, showing a very red component above (to the south of?) the main green auroral arc low across the north. At right, it takes on a STEVE-like appearance. Is this an example of a SAR Arc -- a Sub-Auroral Red Arc? A brief sighting of a partial STEVE arc was reported this night but I missed it. The Kp level did go as high as 5 this night. This scene was at about 12:15 am MDT on April 15. By coincidence the arc of the Milky Way low across the north parallels the arc of the Northern Lights. Capella is at far left in the northwest; Vega is rising at right of centre in the northeast. This is a stitch of 7 segments, each untracked for 30 seconds at f/2.5 with the Sigma 24mm Art lens on the Nikon D750 at ISO 800. Stitched with Adobe Camera Raw.

The Owl and the Galaxy (M97 and M108)

A portrait of the pairing of the Owl Nebula, M97, with the edge-on spiral galaxy M108, below the Bowl of the Big Dipper. The Owl is a magnitude 9.8 planetary nebula in our galaxy about 1700 light years away, while M108 is another galaxy about 32 million light years away, and shining at magnitude 10. There are many very tiny 15th to 18th magnitude galaxies in the field as well, carrying PGC designations. North is to the left in this framing. This is a stack of 20 x 6-minute exposures with the Canon EOS Ra camera at ISO 1600, through the Astro-Physics 130mm EDT apo refractor at f/6 with the 6x7 field flattener. Autoguiding was with the MGEN3 stand-alone guider which controlled the camera shutter and performed a 5-pixel dithering move between each exposure. The mount was the AP Mach 1. No dark frames or LENR was applied. Aligning and stacking, with a Median blend mode, was with Photoshop, which worked perfectly on this set. Taken from home on a very clear night on April 13-14, 2021.

Coma Berenices Star Cluster and Galaxies v2

The large star cluster in Coma Berenices known officially as Melotte 111, at right, with two of the most prominent galaxies in Coma at left: NGC 4559 at top and the Needle Galaxy, NGC 4565, at bottom. Several other fainter galaxies are in the field, including NGC 4494 between the Needle Galaxy and the star cluster, but looking very star-like at this image scale. I shot this April 11, 2021 on a fairly clear night as a test of the new SharpStar 94mm EDPH refractor telescope and its matching field flattener/reducer. A bit of passing haze added a touch of star glows. There is a version of this same field shot a week earlier in hazy skies with much fuzzier stars. This is a stack of 20 x 6-minute exposures at ISO 800 with the Canon EOS Ra, autoguided on the Astro-Physics Mach 1 mount with the Lacerta MGEN3 stand-alone autoguided set to dither 5 pixels between each exposure. No dark frames or LENR were applied. The field of view is about 3.3° x 5°.

Messier 35 and the Jellyfish Nebula

A framing of the area in Gemini containing the large and bright star cluster Messier (M) 35 at right and the curving Jellyfish Nebula, aka IC 443, at left, near the star Propus or eta Geminorum. The small but rich star cluster below M35 is NGC 2158 . The blue reflection nebula above the Jellyfish is IC 444. The Jellyfish is a supernova remnant some 1500 light years away and about 21 light years across. This is a stack of 6 x 8-minute exposures and 8 x 4-minute exposures, all at ISO 800 with the Canon EOS Ra red-sensitive camera, and through the SharpStar 94mm apo refractor at f/4.5 with the EDPH field flattener/reducer. The later shorter exposures were shot with the field getting low in the west and into the murk and light pollution on an early April evening. I shot these as part of testing the new SharpStar 94mm EDPH refractor. No nebula filter was employed here. Luminosity masks with Lumenzia applied as well as a layer of contrast boost applied to the nebulas using the Pro Contrast filter in the Nik Collection Color EFX Pro set of filters. All stacking and blending was with Photoshop. No dark frames taken or applied, just dithering applied between exposures to shift each image by 5 pixels. Auto-guiding, camera control and dithering were with the Lacerta MGEN3 stand-alone auto-guider.

Nebulas in Gemini

A portrait of various emission nebulas in southern Gemini and into northern Orion. At top is the bright star cluster Messier 35, with the small more distant open star cluster NGC 2158 below and to the right of it. Left of centre is the shell-like supernova remnant, IC 443, aka the Jellyfish Nebula. The small blue reflection nebula above and to the left of it is IC 444 amid a field of fainter emission nebulosity. The round and bright nebula at bottom is IC 2174 in Orion, aka the Monkeyhead Nebula. It is mostly an emission nebula but has some blue reflection components. The smaller round red nebula above it is Sharpless 2-247. It appears to be an ionized HII region, as a form of bubble, but is not a planetary nebula. So this is a field of various forms of nebulas: emission, reflection and supernova remnants. Missing is an obvious planetary nebula or dark nebula. The orange star to the right of the Jellyfish is Propus, or eta Geminorum. This is a stack and blend of filtered and unfiltered exposures, the latter set maintaining the natural star colours, and avoiding the haloes introduced by the filters, particularly the L-eXtreme. The image is a blend of: 10 x 6 minutes at ISO 800 without a filter + 8 x 12 minutes at ISO 1600 with an Optolong L-eNhance dual narrow-band filter + 6 x 16 minutes at ISO 3200 with the Optolong L-eXtreme vary narrowband filter, the latter set taken at the end of the sequence when the field was quite low. Through masking the L-eXtreme images contributed only some of the nebulosity, particularly the subtle cyan fringes on the leading edges of IC 443 — it is the Oxygen III cyans that the L-eXtreme is good at picking up. All were with the Canon EOS Ra camera and through the SharpStar 76mm triplet apo refractor with the EDPH reducer/flattener for f/4.5. Guiding was with the multi-star Lacerta MGEN3 stand-alone auto-guider, which also controlled the camera shutter and performed dithering between each frame to shift each exposure by a few pixels for noise reduction in stacking. All stacking, alignment and blending was with Photoshop v22.3. Some curves were applied with Lumenzia luminosity masks to selectively adjust the mids or dark-mid tones. Nik Collection ColorEFX ProContrast filter applied locally to the nebulas, plus a high pass sharpening, both to further enhance the nebulosity. No darks or LENR frames were employed or applied on this cool but pleasant and very clear and dry late winter night.

STEVE Aurora #4 (March 13, 2021)

An appearance of the STEVE arc on March 13, 2021, here looking east from home in southern Alberta, shot at 11:54 pm MST (the camera clock was 6 minutes slow). This was a hour or so after the main aurora to the north had brightened then faded. STEVE lasted no more than 30 minutes this night. This is a single 10-second shot with the Venus Optics 15mm lens at f/2 and Sony a7III at ISO 6400.

STEVE Aurora #3 (March 13, 2021)

An appearance of the STEVE arc on March 13, 2021, here looking overhead from home in southern Alberta, shot at 11:51 pm MST (the camera clock was 6 minutes slow). This was a hour or so after the main aurora to the north had brightened then faded. STEVE lasted no more than 30 minutes this night. This is a single 10-second shot with the Venus Optics 15mm lens at f/2 and Sony a7III at ISO 6400.

STEVE Aurora #2 (March 13, 2021)

An appearance of the STEVE arc on March 13, 2021, here looking west from home in southern Alberta, shot at 11:50 pm MST (the camera clock was 6 minutes slow). This was a hour or so after the main aurora to the north had brightened then faded. STEVE lasted no more than 30 minutes this night. This is a single 10-second shot with the Venus Optics 15mm lens at f/2 and Sony a7III at ISO 6400.

STEVE Aurora #1 (March 13, 2021)

An appearance of the STEVE arc on March 13, 2021, here looking east from home in southern Alberta, shot at 11:49 pm MST (the camera clock was 6 minutes slow). This was a hour or so after the main aurora to the north had brightened then faded. STEVE lasted no more than 30 minutes this night. This is a single 10-second shot with the Venus Optics 15mm lens at f/2 and Sony a7III at ISO 6400.

Auroral Arc Panorama (March 13, 2021)

An arc of aurora across the north, taken from home in southern Alberta March 13, 2021 on a night when the STEVE auroral arc appeared about 45 minutes after this was taken whren the main arc shown here had faded. This is a cropped stitch of 9 segments, each 30 seconds at f/2.8 with the Venus Optics 15mm lens and Sony a7III at ISO 1600. Stitched with Adobe Camera Raw.

Late Winter/Early Spring Sky 360° Panorama

A 360° all-sky or fish-eye panorama of the late winter and early spring sky from a latitude of 51° N. This was March 13, 2021, from home in southern Alberta. This was a test of new panorama gear, using an Acratech Pan Head on top of a Alyn Wallace/MSM Z-Plate mounted to a Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i tracker, to allow taking tracked segments for the panorama, to prevent star trailing. The Z-Plate allowed the Pan Head to mount and move horizontally and vertically in azimuth and altitude despite being on a polar aligned tracker. It worked! This night there was a bright aurora across the northern sky, so I have oriented the view to place due north at bottom. South is at top. High clouds and haze, partly lit by light pollution here, add the natural glows to the stars, emphasizing the bright stars and constellation patterns. No filter was used here. The ground is a stitch of 8 segments shot with the tracker motor off, then blended with a stitch of 20 segments for the sky, in 3 tiers of 8 + 6 + 6 segments, all with the Sigma 24mm lens at f/2.8 and for 1-minute with the Nikon D750 at ISO 1600 for all shots. Stitched with PTGui v12 which at last saves camera metadata when exporting PSD files. The original is 16,000 pixels square.

Late Winter/Early Spring Sky 360° Panorama (with Labels)

A 360° all-sky or fish-eye panorama of the late winter and early spring sky from a latitude of 51° N. This was March 13, 2021, from home in southern Alberta. This was a test of new panorama gear, using an Acratech Pan Head on top of a Alyn Wallace/MSM Z-Plate mounted to a Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i tracker, to allow taking tracked segments for the panorama, to prevent star trailing. The Z-Plate allowed the Pan Head to mount and move horizontally and vertically in azimuth and altitude despite being on a polar aligned tracker. It worked! This night there was a bright aurora across the northern sky, so I have oriented the view to place due north at bottom. South is at top. High clouds and haze, partly lit by light pollution here, add the natural glows to the stars, emphasizing the bright stars and constellation patterns. No filter was used here. The ground is a stitch of 8 segments shot with the tracker motor off, then blended with a stitch of 20 segments for the sky, in 3 tiers of 8 + 6 + 6 segments, all with the Sigma 24mm lens at f/2.8 and for 1-minute with the Nikon D750 at ISO 1600 for all shots. Stitched with PTGui v12 which at last saves camera metadata when exporting PSD files. The original is 16,000 pixels square.

Late Winter/Early Spring Sky Panorama with Aurora

A 360° panorama of the late winter and early spring sky with an arc of aurora, from a latitude of 51° N. This was March 13, 2021, from home in southern Alberta. This night there was a bright aurora across the northern sky, so I have oriented the view to place due north just right of centre. The Big Dipper is at right; Leo is rising at far right. The bright winter stars around Orion are at far left to the south. High clouds and haze, partly lit by light pollution here, add the natural glows to the stars, emphasizing the bright stars and constellation patterns. No filter was used here. The yellow arch at left is a band of cloud illuminated by light pollution. This was a test of new panorama gear, using an Acratech Pan Head on top of a Alyn Wallace/MSM Z-Plate mounted to a Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i tracker, to allow taking tracked segments for the panorama, to prevent star trailing. The Z-Plate allowed the Pan Head to mount and move horizontally and vertically in azimuth and altitude despite being on a polar aligned tracker. It worked! The ground is a stitch of 8 segments shot with the tracker motor off, then blended with a stitch of 20 segments for the sky, in 3 tiers of 8 + 6 + 6 segments, all with the Sigma 24mm lens at f/2.8 and for 1-minute with the Nikon D750 at ISO 1600 for all shots. Stitched with PTGui v12 which at last saves camera metadata when exporting PSD files. The original is 25,600 pixels wide.

Mars Amid the Taurus Star Clusters

Orange Mars, at centre, between the blue Pleiades (at right) and the large Hyades (at left) star clusters, with orange Aldebaran adorning the Hyades (though it is not a member of the Hyades but a foreground star). The more distant and smaller cluster NGC 1647 is at top left, also in Taurus. This was March 11, 2021. This is a stack of 4 x 4-minute tracked exposures with the Samyang 85mm AF lens at f/2.8 on the Canon EOS Ra at ISO 800, with a single exposure of the same length blended in taken through the Kase/Alyn Wallace StarGlow filter to add the star glows! (Though haze moving in was starting to do the job naturally at this time.) The tracker was the Star Adventurer 2i.

Clusters and Nebulas in Auriga

This is a portrait of the main glowing nebulas amid star clusters in central Auriga, the Charioteer. The main nebula at right is the Flaming Star Nebula, aka IC 405. But in this long exposure its mass blends into the central roundish nebula, IC 410. At top left is the pair of Sharpless nebulas, Sh 2-232 and the small Sh 2-235. The fingerlike nebula at top centre is Sh 2-230. The star cluster just to its left is Messier 38, with the small cluster NGC 1907 just below M38. The star cluster at left centre is Messier 36. At centre frame is the nebula IC 417 around the cluster Stock 8. The line of colourful stars at lower right between IC 405 and IC 410 is the Little FIsh or Flying Minnow asterism, aka Mel 11. This is a stack of 6 x 8-minute exposures at ISO 3200 through an Optolong L-Enhance dual-band nebula filter, blended another filtered set of 6 x 16-minute exposures at ISO 3200 with the Optolong L-eXtreme narrowband filter, all blended with a stack of 6 x 8-minute exposures without a filter (for more natural star colors and the blue reflection nebula in IC 405) at ISO 800. All with the Canon EOS Ra camera through the f/5 51mm William Optics RedCat astrograph with a Starizona filter drawer. Autoguiding was with the Lacerta MGEN3 autoguider which applied a dithering shift between each frame to help cancel out thermal noise when stacking. No darks or LENR were used here on this mild winter night at -5° C or so. All stacking, alignment and blending was in Adobe Photoshop 2021. Luminosity masks (DM2, D and M) applied with Lumenzia helped bring out the faint nebulosity. The set was taken as part of testing the L-eXtreme filter to determine its effectiveness in bringing out more nebulosity. It did not contribute much to this stack and required even more exposure time that would have been better spent taking more unfiltered and L-eNhance frames.

Flaring Geosats with Labels (March 9, 2021)

A capture of a line of geosats (geostationary communication satellites) as they flare in brightness during one of their semi-annual "flare" seasons near the equinoxes. They are reflecting sunlight back to Earth, flaring from their normal dim telescopic brightness to briefly become bright enough to see with the unaided eye. They are brightest around the point directly opposite the Sun, here marked by the dim glow of the Gegenschein, another reflection of sunlight but off dust particles in the outer solar system beyond Earth's orbit. In this case, a number of the satellites are flaring to the brightness of Regulus, at first magnitude. While it looks like the satellites are moving, they are actually stationary with respect to the Earth (thus their name) and it is the sky that is moving. But the camera was tracking the sky, keeping the stars pinpoints, making the satellites stand out better as trails due to their motion with respect to the background stars during the 2.5 minutes of accumulated exposure time. This is a stack of 5 x 30-second tracked exposures, with a 24mm Sigma lens at f/2.2 and Nikon D750 at ISO 3200, with the camera on the Star Adventurer 2i tracker.

Flaring Geosats (March 9, 2021)

A capture of a line of geosats (geostationary communication satellites) as they flare in brightness during one of their semi-annual "flare" seasons near the equinoxes. They are reflecting sunlight back to Earth, flaring from their normal dim telescopic brightness to briefly become bright enough to see with the unaided eye. They are brightest around the point directly opposite the Sun, here marked by the dim glow of the Gegenschein, another reflection of sunlight but off dust particles in the outer solar system beyond Earth's orbit. In this case, a number of the satellites are flaring to the brightness of Regulus, at first magnitude. While it looks like the satellites are moving, they are actually stationary with respect to the Earth (thus their name) and it is the sky that is moving. But the camera was tracking the sky, keeping the stars pinpoints, making the satellites stand out better as trails due to their motion with respect to the background stars during the 2.5 minutes of accumulated exposure time. This is a stack of 5 x 30-second tracked exposures, with a 24mm Sigma lens at f/2.2 and Nikon D750 at ISO 3200, with the camera on the Star Adventurer 2i tracker.

Winter Sky Panorama — 360° Spherical

A 360° panorama of the entire later winter/early spring sky from northern latitudes, with the winter Milky Way stretching across the sky, from south (at bottom) to north (at top). Orion and the northern winters stars are at bottom to the southwest. Just below the prominent Pleiades cluster at right is Mars. To the left in the eastern sky the spring stars are rising. I shot this from home on March 7, 2021 on a very clear night with no aurora to the north. South is at bottom; north is at top. East is to the left; west is to the right, toward the major source of light pollution. Polaris is at top centre; the Big Dipper is at upper left. Arcturus is rising at left. Sirius is at bottom, above the southern horizon. This is from a latitude of 51° N. This is a stitch of 21 segments, in 3 tiers or rows of 7 segments each, with the Sigma 24mm Art lens at f/2 and Canon EOS Ra camera at ISO 1600. Exposures were 30 seconds each, all untracked. The camera was moved automatically from frame to frame by placing it on the Sky-Watcher AZ-GTi motorized alt-azimuth mount, programmed with the hand controller from the old Sky-Watcher All-View mount. Stitching was with PTGui. The original is 17,000 by 17,000 pixels.

Rising of the Full Snow Moon 2021

The rising Full Moon of February 27, 2021, the "Snow Moon" of the year. The Moon was technically fullest earlier in the day, some 16 hours before I shot this, and so was slightly past full when it rose for me this evening in southern Alberta. This is a composite stack of 9 short exposures for the Moon, blended with a single longer exposure for the ground and sky taken at the start of the moonrise sequence. But using the same exposure for the moons as I used for the sky would have resulted in vastly overexposed moons. As it was, I adjusted the exposures for the Moon from 0.6 seconds for the first (lowest) Moon to 1/30 second for the last (highest) Moon, to keep the moons properly exposed through the sequence, as it brightened as it rose. But it remained very yellow throughout due to atmospheric absorption of the blue wavelengths. The background exposure for the ground and sky was 2.5 seconds. The sky was much darker than the Moon, because it rose nearly 45 minutes after sunset this night, so the sky had darkened quite a bit by moonrise. All shots were through a SharpStar 76mm EDPH apo refractor with the matching SharpStar 0.8x field flattener/reducer, for an effective focal length of 335mm at f/4.4. The camera was the Canon EOS Ra at ISO 100. I shot images every 5 seconds, for possible use in a time-lapse. But having images spaced that closely together in time made it possible to select images with the Moon's disk just nicely separated to be touching. While the Moon moves its own diameter every 2 minutes due to Earth's rotation, the effect of atmospheric refraction will make it appear to rise at a different rate when it is closer to the horizon than when it is higher. Having lots of frames to pick from made it possible to pick just the right ones for the correct spacing. As it was, the time between the frames used for this composite was about 2 minutes.

Aurora from Home v2 (Feb 19, 2021)

An aurora from home in southern Alberta on February 19, 2021. The Kp index was up to 4 this night and produced superb shows from northern latitudes, and a nice photogenic horizon display from my latitude of 51° N. Illumination is from the waxing quarter Moon behind the camera in the west. This is looking northeast over the old farm rake. This is a single 15-second exposure at f/2.8 with the Laowa 15mm lens and Sony a7III at ISO 800.