I attended my aurora group’s potluck last night.
It was officially called “AAA SSS: Alaskan Aurora Addicts -Soups, Stews and Salads Potluck†and the idea was to get everyone in the Fairbanks area together at a location where we could get out of the old, talk, get to know each other a bit, share some food and then hopefully get outside to get some moon and/or aurora shots.
I also happened to luck upon getting my hands on a 55-210mm telephoto lens at the last minute, so even though I had missed the Blood Moon from the previous night’s lunar eclipse due to some travel arrangement, scheduling and cloud cover issues, I was excited at maybe getting a picture of the full moon with a little bit of details. Just a little bit of detail was all I wanted, so I was hopeful even though I didn’t have much time to research what settings to use.
The AAA admin arrived well before 10pm to set up. We had lots of food between just the four of us, plus we set up tables, put out small tea lights on the tables and used some strings of red lights around the perimeter of the room so that once we wanted to take photos we could turn off the interiors lights, but still be able to see enough to not run into tables and chairs.
The potluck was scheduled to officially start 10pm and we waited until 9:55 to start eating. There was so much good food to eat, plus desserts. We sat around and talked quite a bit, running outside to try to get the moon.  Shortly after the official start time Sharon showed up so she could learn and asked a lot of questions.
Then an hour or so later Jen and her mom Sally showed up and we got to talk to them for over an hour as well. Â They brought this delicious smelling salmon chowder.
Potluck photo picture. Â Joyce, Sally, Jen, Sharon, Pattie, Mary, Candy and Zach
Although a faint green band was seen on Ronn’s cam around 1am, the lights never did show up for us as we ended up being clouded in. We left just about 2am.
Playing with a telephoto lens:
Attempts at moon shots.
Skunked by clouds!
