Rare lunar fog bow with Northern lights

Throughout the years I've seen lots of different phenomena in the sky but one that have been on my bucket list for quite some time is the very rare lunar fog bow. I've seen photos of it but I've never seen it in real life, until now. This Saturday turned out to be my lucky night. I hadn't planed to go out at all but after having a look to the north a saw some faint Northern Lights so I decided to head out to see if the activity would increase.

After an hour or so I decided to drive to another location and after parking the car I started walking on the frozen shoreline of lake Storsjön. After walking a couple of hundred of meters I looked up and could clearly see this lunar fog bow. I immediately stopped and pulled out my camera from my backpack to start taking some photos of it. While shooting I felt so excited and happy to finally see this beautiful white fog bow, it was more beautiful than I ever excepted. And as a bonus there were some Northern Lights visible at the same time.

After a while and while the camera was exposing I wanted to text a very good friend of mine that I was seeing my first ever lunar fog bow. While typing I could see my fingers shiver of excitement and I once again realized how much these beautiful phenomena of nature actually means to me.

A fog bog is pretty much the same as a rainbow. It's located in the opposite direction of the Moon and it's height correlates to the height of the Moon in the same way a rainbows height correlates to the height of the Sun. Fog bows are almost white with faint reds on the outside and blues inside. The colors are so washed out because the bow in each color is very broad and the colors overlap.

My first ever lunar fog bow

Follow my work in social media
http://www.facebook.com/fotografgoranstrand
http://www.instagram.com/Astrofotografen
http://twitter.com/Astrofotografen

The hidden colors

Igår var det ganska kraftig dimma här i Östersund. Jag passade då på att ge mig ut med min kamera för att ta lite naturbilder. En sak som återigen slog mig var hur mycket svagare färgerna blir i vårt landskap när solen inte når fram på grund av moln eller dimma och alla föremål inte kan reflektera solljuset. Det har ni säkert också märkt att allt känns så mycket gråare och tristare sådana dagar.

För att experimentera lite med detta så tog jag en bild på ett väldigt grått motiv, stenar mot en grå himmel. Bilden till vänster är så som bilden kom ut ur kameran. När jag sedan kom hem försökte jag jobba fram så mycket färger som möjligt i datorn utan att tappa detaljer. Bilden till höger visar slutresultatet. Det är en överdriven bild vad gäller mättnad, så det skulle inte ha sett ut så även om solen var framme, men som ni ser, färgerna finns där, trots att vi inte ser dom.

Så nästa gång ni tycker att vardagen känns grå och tråkig, glöm då inte att det är bara en tråkig fasad, där under finns de vackra färgerna.

---

Yesterday it was very foggy here in Östersund. I took the opportunity to go out with my camera to take some photos. One thing that once again struck me was how much weaker colors are in our landscape when objects can't reflect any sunlight due to fog or cloudy weather. I'm sure you also noticed that everything feels so much grayer and boring these days.


To experiment with this I took a picture of a very grey scene, stones against a grey sky. The image to the left is what came out of the camera. When I got home, I tried to work out as much color as possible with my computer without losing any detail. The picture to the right shows the final result. It is an exaggerated picture in terms of saturation, so it wouldn't have looked like that even if the sun was shining, but as you can see, the colors are there, even though we do not see them.

So next time you feel that a day is grey and dull, just remember that beneath that boring facade, there are beautiful colors.