Finding the lunar fog bow

A month ago I had never seen a lunar fog bow, now I have seen three. I got to see my first lunar fog bow on December 17 last year. Last night I got to see two more of these elusive phenomena. We had lots of fog around the city of Östersund and since it was the night of the full moon, I drove around chasing locations where I could see these beautiful bows.

I got two relatively good ones on photo two hours apart. I've included the time and height of the Moon when the photos was taken.

This is something I really love with this type of photography, learning about new phenomena and how and when to see them. After seeing my first lunar fog bow I new how it looked like and what conditions to look for. Last night there where perfect fog bow conditions so it was just a matter of finding the right spot. The moon light needs to be bright so the days around full moon is best. Also the light from the moon can't be to obscured by the fog and you need to have rather dense fog in the opposite direction of the moon. So try to find a location where you're standing just beneath the top of the fog, then you are inside the fog but the moon light is still bright enough to light up the bow.

Also, as you can see by these two photos, a lunar fog bow works exactly as a rainbow, the height of the bow is determined by the height of the light source (Sun/Moon), so if the moon is too high in the sky > ~35° the fog bow won't be visible. A rainbow has a radius of 42° so if the Sun's altitude in the sky is more than 42°, a rainbow can't be visible. The same goes for a fog bow, but it has a much broader radius, 30-45°. So, the lower the altitude of the Sun/moon is, the higher the bow is.

Good luck bow hunting!

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Galaxies in the mountains

We're living on a small planet we call Earth. Our planet is located about two-thirds of the way out from the center of out home galaxy the Milky Way, that's about 26,000 light-years away from the center. In this photo you can see the Milky Way stretching up in the sky from behind the mountains.

Our closest neighboring galaxy is the Andromeda galaxy, it's located about 2,5 million light-years. It is the most distant object in the sky that you can see with your unaided eye. Here you can see Andromeda close to the center of the photo as a small disc shaped object. It apparent size in the sky is actually four times the size of a full Moon, but since its outer regions are so dim, we just see the much brighter center of the galaxy.

These two galaxies are actually on a collision course and will eventually merge together. But don't worry, it won’t happen for another 4 billion years. But just for a second, try to imagine what it will look like when Andromeda is much closer to us, that will really be some view.

The bright shining object down to the left is the Moon. At the time of this photo it was about 40% lit but since I used a long exposure time to expose for the Milky Way, the Moon is extremely over exposed.

This photo is a 7 shot panorama shot using a Nikon D810A with a Nikon AF-S 14-24 mm f/2.8 lens. Exposure for each photo was 20 seconds, ISO 1600 with f/4.0

Two galaxies in the night sky

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Mars, Moon and Venus

Last night we could see three celestial bodies in the evening sky. In the upper left corner you see a small bright dot, that's planet Mars. Then to the right of the crescent moon you can see planet Venus. This photo was taken just after sunset when the Sun lit up the higher clouds in a very beautiful way. On the horizon you can see the mountains being covered by really low clouds.

I really love these close encounters in our solar system, I get such a strong presence of us sitting on a planet orbiting a star together with the other planets.

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Mars, Moon and Venus in the evening sky.

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