what's that glow? (Blue Mountains)

After seeing reasonably large sucker holes, I had fetched the computer for the Paramount and set it up. We had been viewing various objects, and Saturn, in the C14.

At some point, I walked out of the Geoff Brown Observatory and walked north toward the house. And noticed something strange... A glow. Like city light. But I knew there was no city there...

I ran about the property, and through the house, letting people know there was likely aurora happening.

With some trepidation, I knocked at the T@B. Roused sleepy Skeena and Phil. Lora did not kill me.  

Grabbed my camera and tripod. And quickly tried some long exposures. Nothing at 1 or 5 seconds. Took me a while to figure out the self-timer mode...

		10 seconds. Something there.
		20 seconds. We could see a green glow on the view screen!
		30 seconds. Yes! Cassiopeia!

I was so happy. Here, at the Carr observatory, of course, was the place to be. Clouds still filled the air but not enough to block the view. I had a decent camera at my disposal. Steadied on a tripod.

Now I just needed to better control the camera. And focus!

All shot with a Canon 40D and 18-55 lens.

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I didn't know it at the time but I had put (in the dark) the camera into C1 mode versus M. So a bunch of weird settings were used, like a custom white balance of 4600. JPG was used instead of RAW. Also, initially, it was in high-speed continuous shooting drive mode.