Sky Glow from Solar Activity???

[Tom Droege <droege@wwa.com>]

Mike and all,

Last night I noticed an unusually large variation in the sky background of
the R filter.

>From Mike's analysis.log:

Filter       Mag Adj.           Noise               Background Var.

R             -1.1  to -2.2        54 to 60            0.006 to 0.08

I              -.1   to 0.2          50 to 70            0.004 to 0.08

The numbers are ranges over the night for the better data.

In looking at the R data one sees a 3000 count variation from the north
side (darker) to the south side.   This seems like a lot.  But the sky
looked clear.   There was some moon, but most of the data was taken with
the moon near the horizon 1 am to sunrise.

So it really looks like there was a huge red glow in the sky that incresed
towards the horizon.
Seems like a lot to me.   The noise numbers above are typical for me for a
clear night.  These sorts of problems point (for me) to taking smaller
local comparisons, or of fitting some sort of curve over declination.  What
say???

Tom Droege