Perseid, Aurora and NLC - Astronomy Picture Of the Day at NASA

Today I'm featured as Astronomy Picture Of the Day at NASA with my photo of a Perseid, Aurora and Noctilucent Clouds. It was taken during last year's Perseid meteor shower. That night was the first night of the season I saw the Northern Lights and it was also the last night I saw some Noctilucent clouds for that summer. This astrophotogrpaher hat trick will be hard for me to repeat but one can always hope for another chance for the upcoming Perseid shower that peaks tomorrow.

Perseid, Northern lights and Noctilucent clouds

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Noctilucent Clouds

Last night I got to see my first Noctilucent clouds up here in Jämtland for this season. These are clouds made of tiny ice crystals high up in the atmosphere that are lit up by the scattered sunlight late at night.

Aurora, NLC and a Perseid/Bolide

Me and a couple of friends went out to watch the yearly Perseid meteor shower. After 01:00 Swedish summer time we started to see some faint aurora above some really nice NLC. This is the first aurora I've seen for this season and a new record for me seeing an aurora as early as 13th of August.

In the shot you can also see some Noctilucent clouds and a bright Perseid.

A bright Perseid over some aurora and Noctilucent clouds

Here's a collection of Perseids I captured last night.

Several bright Perseids in this composite image

After a while watching the aurora I started filming the beautiful sky, I turned around and headed back to our campfire and kept filming. Suddenly I saw how the sky turned green in the corner of my eye and I got to see one of the biggest bolide I ever seen and to my luck I got it on this film.

Sorry for the wind noise in the beginning and the bad language in the end :-)



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Noctilucent Clouds

On the 27th of July 2014 I saw some of the most beautiful Noctilucent Clouds I've ever seen. They emerged shortly after sunset and after a while they covered the entire sky. In this movie I've included an all sky time lapse that shows how these clouds changed over the course of two hours.



Music: Chris Zabriskie - Cylinder Five