A Starry Night of Iceland
Credit:
Stephane Vetter
(Nuits sacrees)
On some nights, the sky is the best show in town.
On this night, the sky was not only the best show in town, but a composite image of the sky
won an international competition for landscape astrophotography.
The above winning image was taken two months ago over Jökulsárlón, the largest
glacial lake in
Iceland.
The photographer combined six exposures to capture not only two green
auroral rings, but their reflections off the serene lake.
Visible in the distant background sky is the band of our
Milky Way Galaxy,
the
Pleiades
open
clusters
of stars, and the
Andromeda galaxy.
A powerful
coronal mass ejection from the Sun
caused auroras to be seen as far south as
Wisconsin, USA.
As the Sun progresses toward
solar maximum in the next few years,
many more
spectacular
images
of
aurora are expected.