Category Archives: Skies and Stars

Northern Lights Saturday

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After we got done with the big show Saturday night (see the post below this one) my friend Mike and I headed back to his cabin along Lake Sakakawea. Along the way we saw some familiar lights in the sky. Yep, that’s right…after a long dry spell, I was finally going to get to take pictures of the Northern Lights! Here’s what we saw. I’m pretty sure the orange glow on the right is from Minot, as we were in a remote corner of Ward County.

I shot up another one of those notorious Minimum Maintenance roads that I’m known to favor. It seems that no matter where I am, even in a remote spot where I didn’t even know where I was, I can find those roads. They’re great for stomping on the brakes and taking pictures. Shortly after we took a couple of snapshots of the auroras and the Milky Way, the sky faded. That’s okay…we were fading too, after eleven hours of work. I pointed the truck back toward the lake, got a good night’s sleep, and made it back to Bismarck in time for church Sunday morning.

International Space Station, space shuttle flyover last night

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This was the scene at Fort Lincoln at around eleven o’clock Tuesday night. What you can’t see is me eating sunflower seeds and slammin’ Mountain Dew with my friend Jerry. What you can see, however, is a composite of four long exposures of the ISS and shuttle going past. The shuttle was a little behind the space station, as it is no longer docked. They were overhead for a minute or two, then went into the shadows before they hit the horizon. That’s why the left end of the trail kinda fades into obscurity.

These objects are BRIGHT in the night sky and travel very quickly. If you’re interested in more information on when the ISS may pass over Bismarck again (other than Thursday night at around 10:30) and see a photo of it streaking past the ND State Capitol Building, click here.

Saturday sundog

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After a breakfast meeting with some of the guys from church, I saw the sun starting to poke up over the horizon. What the heck, I might as well head east a bit and see what it does! This morning it had to blaze through a layer of clouds and lots of blowing snow, but that made it possible to spot a really bright sundog to the north. The cloud cover made it impossible to spot a corresponding parhelion to the south.

Comet McNOT

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All the space weather and astronomy websites have been posting remarkable pictures of Comet McNaught, a near-earth object that put on a fabulous display as it passed through our solar system. The sun started to melt the comet more and more as it approached, and it is now even visible in daylight…if you live in the southern hemisphere.

I tried to capture this comet with my camera…repeatedly. People from as far north as Great Falls, and perhaps even further north, were posting their pictures of it…so what was my problem? Clouds.

I would dutifully get up early to go find a nice high point from which to stalk this celestial event, pull out my little locator map that I’d found on the web somewhere, and wait for the comet to come over the eastern horizon. Many mornings I never even got out the door; a look outside would indicate far too many clouds for the trip to be worthwhile. On some particularly frustrating mornings, the sky would be perfectly clear…except for a thick band along the horizon! It seemed I could NOT catch a break. Soon I began to read on the websites that Comet McNaught would no longer be visible from the northern hemisphere. So I guess I missed it…or did I?

This was a sunrise photo I posted on the morning of January 12th. I’d run over to the church to sweep the snow from front steps and had my camera pack with me (of course). The sun was doing some cool things, so I found some high ground on my way home and grabbed some nice wide sunrise shots for later. As it turns out, there might be a comet in there somewhere!

Obviously I didn’t use my telephoto lens or adjust my aperture to try to find the comet, but I think that I did get it. Had I tried to find it and set the camera accordingly, who knows? Maybe I’d have been able to get a shot of the tail. Maybe I would have had to show up a little earlier, before the sun began to blaze in the eastern sky. In any case, that’s apparently as close to Comet McNaught as I’m ever going to be.

Thursday Night Lights – aurora borealis gallery

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I was about to go to one of my most anticipated events of the year, the Image Printing Christmas party, when the call came in. It was my friend Chuck, calling with the news that the Northern Lights were in full swing. I already had my coat on, but the destination had changed: We were heading north!

As you can see, my favorite Northern Lights probability indicator was going crazy. It had good reason to. Below are some of the wild imagery Chuck and I brought back from the frozen tundra:

When we first got there, the sky had a lot of reds and yellows mixed in with the greens.

In the eastern sky, the auroras swept upward towards the zenith. You can make out the constellation Orion as well as the Pleiades in this shot…that should give you a sense of magnitude.

After a while the reds went away, but the lights took on more of a ripple effect for a while. This was taken facing east as well.

This is a goofy angle, but it does show a good example of the winding snake-like formation reaching up through the night sky. All the upswept lights merged in a big vortex over our heads!

Here’s the vortex. The light was moving so fast, the camera didn’t have time to absorb it. I pushed the camera to the limit and was able to get the shot, sorta. Because I had the sensitivity set so high, I also got a lot of other stars in the mix. But this is where all the lights were coming together.

This ribbon of light followed the Milky Way across the sky. It rippled too fast for the camera to do it justice; it takes a long exposure for the camera to truly capture what’s going on.

This was the most fantastic evening I’ve had in YEARS as far as the Northern Lights go. They were swirling, dancing, and rippling. It was just like all those nights I remember in the 1980’s, from the last solar maximum. For a year and a half now I’ve been lamenting that we’re in a solar minimum, now that I actually have a camera capable of astrophotography. Well, I’ll be dancing with joy as things start to ramp up and we get light shows like this in the future.

Parhelion

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This was a unique sight on Saturday: a rainbow on each side of the sun! It’s a parhelion, or sundog. It’s formed by rays of light refracting through ice crystals, just like they do with water droplets to form a rainbow.

I saw this as a bunch of low clouds rolled past. The remnants of the clouds caused this phenomenon to occur, and it disappeared when the skies cleared completely.

Northern Lights tease

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I was about ready for bed last night when I got an exciting call from a friend: the Northern Lights are bright tonight! So I grabbed my wife and a couple of good friends, hopped in the truck, and blazed up north. The auroras were visible, the night relatively calm but cool. And while the sky the was lit to the north, it pretty much sat there and teased us for a while before settling down.

Don’t get me wrong…any Northern Lights are a treat. This one I’d hoped would be a little extra special because one of our friends who came along is from “the South” and I was hoping for a spectacular show for her. While we saw a lot of shooting stars, likely stragglers from the Orionid shower last week, the auroras didn’t really live up to any of my stories of past experiences. Bummer.

I take stargazing pretty seriously. I tend to measure and schedule things in 15 minute increments, and within one of those periods I can have the truck rolling with my standard stargazing setup:

– Camera equipment
– Folding camping chairs
– Jackets and gloves
– Cooler of water, Dew, or Red Bull from the fridge in the garage
– Speaker system for the iPod
– Inverter & extension cord to power ’em
– Maglite
– Sunflower seeds, jerky, etc.
– Can of spare fuel from the garage pump (in case we go crazy)
– GPS receiver, now that I finally have one

I have a standard set of stargazing music ready to go on the iPod, too. We stood outside the truck with the music going for a while last night, just looking at the amazingly clear view of the stars and exclaiming when a meteor would zip past. All was not lost. But I really hope for an opportunity to show Jenny and my other Southern friends what the Northern Lights can really be like here in North Dakota.

Fiesta Moon

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Obviously this picture wasn’t taken this week; the phase of the moon and the leaves on the trees betray that. But it’s one of those photos I’ve got “in the holster” for when I need them, and it came to mind tonight as I read an article by Tessa Sandstrom in the new issue of the Dakota Beacon.

In her article, Ms. Sandstrom talks about the history of this building and its importance during Bismarck’s railroad days. She’s got some neat historic photos to accompany her research and a few neat odd facts to boot.

If you haven’t picked up an issue of the Dakota Beacon yet, you don’t know what you’re missing. There are complementary copies available at many Bismarck locations, including an honor-system box in front of the Post Office on Rosser. I highly recommend that you read and subscribe to this magazine – I do! You won’t be disappointed.

Keep your eyes on the North Dakota skies

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While I was busy running around the state with a video camera this week, the beautiful sunsets kept coming. We’re now in a state of full moon, which means we’re on track for a new moon (ie, no moon) for the Orionid Meteor Shower in a couple of weeks. We’ve had Aurora Borealis events lately, and I’ve actually captured some streaking meteors on film lately too!

Winters in the Bismarck-Mandan area tend to mean hazy skies filled with ice crystals, making stargazing difficult over much of the year. If you are fascinated by the sights above, we’re truly winding down for the year. I’ll be keeping my eyes on those North Dakota skies…how ’bout you?

Aurora borealis! October arrives with a lightshow

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This is just one example of the varied Northern Lights display that took place Saturday night. I’d finished up with a meeting at church and took a detour on the way home to my wife when I saw it – the spikes of light on the northern horizon! Needless to say, I dashed home to get her, then off we went to watch the show.

We found a brand new vantage point, one I never knew existed before. This is especially important because I, as an overly sentimental chap, have so many stargazing memories from the past. I have yet to make many of them with my wife, so this is a fitting start!

On the way back into town on Highway 83, I got a surprise – a green Dodge 4×4 heading straight at us in the southbound lane! I dodged him and called 911. One can only assume that he came (drunk) from the Burnt Creek Club. I hope the HP’s got him. My friend Henry Weber, one of my first friends when I moved to North Dakota and started 5th grade, was killed by a similar drunk idiot who got on the wrong lane of I-94 and struck the car Henry was riding in head-on. There is NO punishment too severe for drunk drivers, even ones that don’t succeed in causing an accident.

That’s a whole different blog entry, though. Thank God he steered us clear of that drunk guy and allowed me to come home and tell you, at 2:43 in the morning, about the glorious Northern Lights that graced our evening…and show you this picture. I may post more from tonight as well, because we took them from several locations and while the lights were doing several different things. You’d hardly believe they were all in the same night!