On Saturday April 1, 2001, we held our annual pot luck star party at Stone Haven Observatory. Most everyone had gone home by 10:30 or so, except my good friend Jim Deck. He and I were sitting at a table by the roll-off observatory shooting the breeze. We talked about photography as Jim was beginning to take pics with his new large format camera. The subject of the futility of trying to capture the grandeur of grand Canyon came up. I compared it to trying to capture an Aurora display as I'd seen back in Wisconsin. He said he'd never seen one, but would really like to. Jim got quiet for a second, staring over my shoulder to the north when he said, "What's THAT?" I turned around to see...an Aurora display! I forgot to answer him, but jumped up, ran in the house, got my camera, set it up and took the following pictures.

Wow! An Aurora In Phoenix?!

image 1
Aurora 1		 image 2
Aurora 2		 image 3
Aurora 3
image 3
Aurora 4		 image 1
Aurora 5		 image 2
Aurora 6
image 3
Aurora 7		 image 3
Aurora 8		 image 1
Aurora 9
image 2
Aurora 10		 image 3
Aurora 11		 image 3
Aurora 12
image 1
Aurora 13		 image 2
Aurora 14		 image 3
Aurora 15
image 3
Aurora 16		 image 1
Aurora 17		 image 2
Aurora 18
image 3
Aurora 19		 image 3
Aurora 20		  

Page URL: http://www.stonehavenobservatory.com/AuroraGrid.html

Copyright 1999, Steve Dodder
Webmaster : Steve Dodder
Revised: 8/27/10

sun1

The sunspot group comes over the limb. This shot was taken on Monday, 3/26/01.

sun2

The next day, the big spot looked like this. Note how close it is to the center of the disk.

sun3

This is an eyepiece projection closeup of the big spot, taken 3/28/01 about 4:45 pm MST.

 

 
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