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I was hoping for an early CME impact this night so that maybe I could do a little aurora photography. It was either that or get some images of the Geminid meteor shower. One big problem.....clouds. They were covering the sky until around 2-3 a.m., at which point they were just covering most of the sky. After seeing several stars out my window in town I decided to head out. It was around 4 a.m. now and the CME from the X flare had still not arrived, so all I was hoping for were meteors. Well I get north of town and see that the area I saw the stars in was about the only clear area. Then it was covered as other small areas would clear. I saw several smaller meteors but wasn't able to capture them. Then finally sometime around 5 a.m. the majority of my western sky was clear. But, at the same time my meteor count crashed. I saw less of them, now that I could see more of the sky. The cloud motions were from the northwest to the southeast(I'm looking west). I began to see my stars going bye bye to the far northwest, then soon I could see the edge of the cloud bank moving back in. I have what amounts to a cool series of images, like a time lapse, of this arrival. It's cool to watch on my camera's lcd screen when I hold the button down to see the next image. I guess it's cool enough I will probably have to make a video from those stills and put it on youTube or something. I know if I make a gif of it it will be larger than I care to place on here. Anyway, this first image is part way through that series of photos. The lights towards the bottom left I believe are from Fremont NE. If you live near a city and get some clouds at night this can be fun to play with. Just do long exposures and they'll brighten up and become colorful. This one above is F4, 46 seconds, with 800 ISO.
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Since my meteor viewing was hosed I was left with nothing else to do but mess around. While holding still for this whole shot, in the dark of night, I was glad I wasn't hearing anything rustling around in the field. I was thinking about it while I was standing there. I was like, come on time. F4, 78 seconds, 800 ISO.
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It's now a little closer to morning twilight. Twilight is a great time to mess around, but it's constantly changing and fairly quickly(especially while doing such long exposures). No I'm not taking a pee. LOL I just noticed it looked like that and now that I mention it you probably will too. My hands are in my jacket pockets and I'm trying to stay warm.
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Looking south now. Blair covers the whole thing from left to right, but the lights on the left that are so bright are the cargill plant. I'm not sure why I jumped into a lot of shots. I can't think of any storm picture I've ever taken with myself in the shot, so it's not a habit. I guess it is enteraining for some reason when the exposure is long. Well I guess it's something to do while waiting on the exposure too. You can "see through me" because I have to run back and release the cable release.
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Oh yeah this one reminds me. I was there from 4 a.m. till around 7 a.m. I left the key turned forward so it wouldn't sit there and ding(so I could listen to the radio). It seems most cars that is opposite and you can turn it back and be ok....not ths one for some reason. Well my battery is only 1 year old and a good one. I never thought just having the radio on low that whole time would have much of an effect on it(ac/heater was off). I drive out to my parents house to visit the dogs every day, only a 2 mile drive. Well I have cold starts that pull down on the battery when it starts. I drive the short distance and turn it back off. Then it gets cold again by the time I leave and I repeat back home.....day after day(so it's never able to charge back up that well). Well I went to leave this morning to head back home and it just barely started. It almost stopped before the last turn over that it started on. So on my drive home, tired as hell, I got to drive around in cirlces for a while charging the thing. The green light inside the car is the odometer, the yellow is the stuck on check engine light, and the red is that silly fake anti theft light they put in vehicles. Oh yeah I actually washed my car just for the auroras, knowing I'd get boared and want to include it...for something to include. I wish I would have cleaned the dash like I meant to. I wanted/want to get some shots from inside looking out at the auroras. F4, 79 seconds, 800 ISO.
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Getting further into twilight before the sun comes up. F4, 54 seconds, 400 ISO now. The lighting is now changing pretty fast for long exposures.
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Moon blowing out. The trick was to start the exposure right before the moon went behind the clouds so that it'd look normal. F4, 53 seconds, ISO 100. When bluring anything(clouds or star trails, etc) it's usually best to either not do it at all, or do it fairly good. Things with a small amount of blur often don't look that good. Since I wanted to still go for a while to get a good blur I had to drop the ISO to 100(brighter east skies would just blow out badly).
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Here is a better one, not blowing the moon out by simply waiting for the right moment to start the shot. The now red tint I assume is coming from the rising sun. It never looked very red while standing there since a lot of the sun was blocked by the thicker clouds now more to the east. F4, 33 seconds, ISO 200.
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The clouds looked kind of cool now that it was getting lighter and I wanted to freeze them more. I didn't freeze them enough here and they are just into that bad spot of too much blur and not enough blur. To do it I was using F4, 3 seconds, 1600 ISO. They are frozen enough to kind of get the idea of what they looked like. A bit after this I head home to go to sleep. I finally get to bed at 8 a.m....that always feels weird. I wind up back at this very spot shooting auroras the same day...after I wake up(woke up at 11:30 and then for good at 1:30 pm...not much sleep). At night I was standing there talking to some friends and was like ok this just feels so strange, noting I was out on this same lonely dirt road just before sunrise and now I'm back here the same day. What made it seem strange was the way you kind of seperate days with sleep. I had went to bed and so it felt like a new, different day....but it wasn't and here I was back there. To see the rest of the day head on over to the evening auroras HERE.
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