Mountain Startrails

On April 23 I was out looking for the Lyrid Meteor Shower. While watching the sky I set my camera to take several long exposures to make this star trail image with the mountains as foreground. In total I took 80 shots with an exposure time of 30 seconds, so this stacked photo has a total exposure time of 40 minutes. While editing this photo I realized that I really miss the dark starry nights. The stars won't be visible until the beginning of August here in Östersund due to the bright summer nights.

Aurora delivered to Coldplay

I'm proud to announce that my aurora from March 17 in 2013 is used by Coldplay in their unique TV-special Ghost Stories. In the movie my aurora is used when Coldplay performs their new single "A Sky Full of Stars". The movie was shot in Los Angeles earlier this year in front of 800 fans in a specially built amphitheater.

Filmed by Grammy-nominated director Paul Dugdale, Coldplay: Ghost Stories was recorded in a custom-built amphitheatre in front of an audience of 800 fans i Los Angeles earlier this year. The show blends a unique in-the-round performance from the band with cinematic vignettes and immersive 360-degree projections. This TV-special is now broadcast worldwide while Coldplay is touring with their new album "Ghost Stories".

I recorded the aurora over Östersund on 17th of March 2013. It was photographed for 4 hours and then put together to a movie showing the development of the aurora across the entire sky.

Official footage from Ghost StoriesTV Special


Behind the scenes footage of the TV-special


My all sky aurora movie

Factfile about me I work full time as a professional astrophotographer out of Sweden. My photos has previously been highlighted several times by NASA, National Geographic and other major international online news agencies and magazines. My movies has been broadcast in SVT (Swedish national public TV broadcaster) and Discovery Channel. My aurora movie will also be featured in a new upcoming fulldome show called "Solar Superstorms", a production of Spitz Creative Media, NCSA’s Advanced Visualization Lab, and Thomas Lucas Productions, in association with NASA. I will also contribute with several solar scenes in the movie "Solar Superstorms". In 2013 I was rewarded Astrophotographer of the year in Sweden by the Swedish Astronomical Society. http://www.astrofotografen.se

Photo: Sverker Berggren

Factfile Coldplay

Coldplay is a British alternative rock band that was formed in London, England, 1996. The group consists of vocalist / pianist / guitarist Chris Martin, lead guitarist Jonny Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman, and drummer Will Champion. Coldplay have sold over 50 million albums and is also known for their hit singles "Yellow", "The Scientist", "Speed ​​of Sound", "Fix You", "Viva la Vida" and the Grammy Award-winning "Clocks".

http://www.coldplay.com

The Little Astrophotographer - Revisited

The last few days I've been going through some of my old photos. Today I visited January 2012 and found my photos from an amazing night with a beautiful aurora. Back then I made a 360° panoramic image showing the entire aurora and projected this as a small planet. I named it The Little Astrophotographer after the well know fairy tale The Little Prince. My little planet photo looks much like that book cover.

I've reworked all the data from scratch and rebuild the little planet image. This time it's much cleaner from noise and I think it has more appealing colors. Just for fun, I also did try a new projection of the old data, I really like the shape of the curved horizon.

Another solar halo

A couple of days ago another strong an beautiful solar halo was visible here over Östersund. I went to a large building called Arctura (Named after the star Arcturus) to capture this halo. Arctura is a hot water storage tank and it's 65 meters high, has a diameter of 27 meters and contains 26 000 000 liters of water. At the top of Arctura is a restaurant and during this day, their guests should have had a nice view over Östersund with this halo.