Halo, Moon and Flare

As the day was ending, and the sun sinking into the west, I looked up and saw a rainbow patch in the sky directly above the sun... Quickly grabbing the camera, and stepping outside, so I had a bushy tree between me and the sun I grabbed a couple of quick shots



and with a plane



these have been ID'ed to me as Upper Tangent Arc's, first time I've caught something like this on camera.

I kept an eye out as night fell, to see what the conditions would do, there was some high thin mist again, and my back was worse than normal, so I didn't get out the HEQ5. I did set the Skymax on the camera tripod for a couple of shots at the moon

Another Horns shot



And a normal angled one


Next up was the first flare of the night. I setup the Satcatcher, with the 450d and EF 50 mm lens mounted ready, and watched the clock tick away, and caught it

Iridium 12 - Mag -2


Then, with an hour and a half before the next flare, I setup the little NexStar (much easier to move about as it's so much lighter) with the Skymax on it and had a bash at some more webcam work.

Firstly a wide view using only the webcam of the region I was aiming at


Then a couple of closeups with the Ultima x2 barlow as well...

Piccolomini - I'm not sure why this has come out so noisy.


Jannsen itself, I pushed the frame rate up to 15 fps for this


I packed up at that point, and waited for the next couple of flares to come along...

Iridium 62 - Mag 0 plus a plane over my neighbours house


And finally Iridium 57 - Mag -7, I didn't give myself enough time to line this up and it was a bit rushed


It was good to see a few flares and image them again. I enjoyed that, it's good to get out even with limited facilities.