Location: Pawnee Grasslands, CR-61, Colorado Date: 2012-07-15 Camera: Canon XSi (modified) Lens: Canon 50mm f/1.4 Mount: Astrotrac Shot: 12-panel Mosaic 12x15 seconds f/2.8 ISO 800 Processing: Photoshop, Topaz
Location: CR-61 Pawnee National Grasslands, CO Date: 2012-07-11 Camera: Canon XSi (modified) Lens: Sigma 20mm f/1.8 Mount: Still Tripod, Astrotrac Shot: Mosaic 12x3 minutes f/3.5 ISO 800 (Sky) 6x30 seconds f/3.5 ISO 800 (Land) Processing: PTGui, Photoshop, Topaz
On July 15th, 2012 there was a predicted conjunction where the Moon, Venus, Jupiter, and the bright star, Aldebaran appeared close to each other in the early morning sky. Two days prior to that, the sun released an X-Class flare directed at the Earth. When material from this flare interacted with Earth's atmosphere it produced a geomagnetic storm (Kp = 5) which was powerful enough to allow us in Northern Colorado to see the northern lights side-by-side against the planetary conjunction. Location: Pawnee Grasslands, CR-61, Colorado Date: 2012-07-15 Camera: Canon XSi (modified) Lens: Canon 50mm f/1.4 Mount: Astrotrac Shot: 13-panel Mosaic 13x8 seconds f/2.5 ISO 1600 Processing: Photoshop, Topaz
