Arche traverant le ciel arctique
Image Credit & Copyright:
Giulio Cobianchi
What are these two giant arches across the sky?
Perhaps the more familiar one, on the left, is the central band of our
Milky Way Galaxy.
This grand disk of stars and nebulas here appears to encircle much of the southern sky.
Visible below the stellar arch is the
rusty-orange planet
Mars and the extended
Andromeda galaxy.
For a few minutes during this
cold
arctic night, a second
giant arch appeared to the right,
encircling part of the northern sky: an
aurora.
Auroras are much closer than stars as they are composed of glowing air high in
Earth's atmosphere.
Visible outside the
green auroral arch is the group of stars popularly
known as the
Big Dipper.
The featured digital composite of 18 images was captured in mid-December over the
Lofoten Islands in
Norway.