Amazing dust storm in Broken Hill

[Quark]

Hi All,

Living in the remote outback of Australia is great for astronomy, mostly.

Have attached some images from 3:30pm, yep mid afternoon today.
We had a dust storm like I have never seen in my life before. We left home in strong winds and a raging dust storm to pick up our son from school. About 10 minutes after we parked the car out the front of his school the wind strengthened considerably and it went black. We could not even see the car parked in front of us, visibility was zero.

The school was put into lock down for the safety of the children. Half an hour later visibility improved to about 100 metres, the sky went from black back to a really dark red and we went into the school to get our lad. Have been home now for about an hour and the sky is the deepest red imaginable.

I have attached a photo of my observatory and one of over our back fence.
I realize this has not got a lot to do with astronomy, but it's not the sort of thing one would see every day. It is much darker now but I would need a tripod to image it as the exposure would need to be a few seconds.

Regards
Trevor

Regards
Trevor

[kinetic]

Awesome Trev,

I just posted a pic in Kev's thread.
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=50548
I've seen some humdingers from Roxby and Coober Pedy
but nothing like Dad described to me on the phone :)

Steve

[renormalised]

Sure that wasn't taken through a H-alpha filter!!!:P:D:D

Hope that dust didn't get into the observatory!!!!:eyepop:

[Kevnool]

No worries Trev.
Nothing wrong with 2.
Its just i should of titled mine a lot better.
But its still an awesome event.
Cheers Kev.

[jjjnettie]

How awesome is that!!
Not so good having to clean up afterwards, but I'm always amazed at what nature throws at us.

[marki]

This used to happen frequently when I lived in Mt Newman (NW WA). If they had a blast at the mine and the wind was blowing the right way the whole town got enveloped in a huge dust cloud. Real bugger if you had any washing on the line :P. Red dirt is hard to remove and gets into everything. Great pics by the way, love that red colour.

Mark

[garyp]

What An incredible sight. I hope on damage was done. It's probably on it's way to NZ by now. It does happen.

Cheers

Gary:)

[sheeny]

Thanks for sharing Trevor! Nature shows another of her facets!

Al.

[leon]

Gee's i hate dust, :sadeyes: thanks Trevor. :thumbsup:

Leon :thumbsup:

[lacad01]

Pretty amazing :eyepop:
Saw on the news tonight that Canberra covered in dust as well, probably same source...

[iceman]

We've got it here on the East coast now - amazing sight outside.

[sheeny]

Yep. It's here alright... red/orange glow, mud stuck to the windows... I can smell it and taste it:lol: ...weet-bix and dust for breakfast!:rolleyes: Anyone seen Marjorie Doors? (Just a test for Little Britain fans...:P)

Al.

[Inmykombi]

Woke this morning near Gosford to maybe the same dust storm that has moved East. And of course we left the windows open last night, now everything is covered in dust.
We had rain first that came with a thunderstorm, so everything was wet first and befroe it got covered in dust.

Here are some photos of the morning on the East Coast.

[BerrieK]

Great pics Trevor and Geoff.

Trevor, the red colour in your photos is really realistic and vibrant. I bet your lovely garden and horse-heads are just covered in dust. I hope your observatory is air-tight. We,ve had it blow through here overnight and early this morning with a lovely powdering of dust. Its has also been raining so everything is muddy, including the contents of our water tanks!!

Kerrie

[h0ughy]

we have your dust now Trevor

[Lismore Bloke]

Hey Kevnool and Trevor, quit doing donuts in the dust, cut it out!!! Transparency tonight will be NIL :eyepop::eyepop::eyepop:

[Ian Robinson]

Is your mirrors didn't need cleaning yesterday .... they will need it now.

[bert]

Sorry Guys, my bad. I received my new Sbig today.

I've heard of new scope syndrome but this is ridiculous, here in bathurst its still raining mud.

Brett

[multiweb]

That's pretty hard to breathe. You can actually taste that stuff :eek:I hope it clears tonight as they say it should. :shrug:

[DavidU]

It looks like a Martian dust storm with those colors.

[Kevnool]

They good donuts look for them on youtube.... :lol: .

The dust is gone out here now.
Patchy skies and wind still but no sign of dust on the horizon...Yet..

Surely there cant be no more dust left...lol

Cheers Kev.

[multiweb]

That's because it's all here now. :P

[Quark]

Hi All,

Here is a link to out local ABC Radio station, they have a video from outside there building in Broken Hills main street, pretty amazing stuff.

http://www.abc.net.au/local/videos/2009/09/22/2693489.htm?site=brokenhill

The wind has been very strong all night, awoke this morning and every thing is covered in a thick layer of dust and that is inside our house.

Still windy but not as bad, heaps of cloud, maybe we will get some rain to clean the place up a bit.

At this stage I have not been game enough to open my observatory. My scope has very close fitting vinyl covers over both ends, plastic wheely bin liner bags pulled over both end and two dust sheets over the whole thing. Every surface in our house is covered with dust, it was very hard to breath last night, it will take days to clean up.

Regards
Trevor

[RB]

Nice shots Trevor and Geoff.
I can't believe how red it looked early this morning.

[Kevnool]

And i thought time travelled fast. :lol: .

The dust is just as quick.

Cheers Kev.