Astronomy Picture Of the Day at NASA

Today I'm featured as Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) at NASA with my photo of a lunar flyby.

The photo of a Gibbous Moon flyby was taken on the 29th of October in 2018 and was taken in the mountain area of Jämtland, Sweden

Just as I had set the camera for the correct exposure of the Moon and the mountain, this plane passed by. I quickly snapped a couple of shots and this is one of them. The photo was taken using my Nikon D850 with the Nikon AF-S 300mm f/4E PF ED VR lens.

This is APOD number 17 for me and it's always such an honor to be featured by NASA.

You can buy this photo as a print here - https://shop.astrofotografen.se/p661802438/ebc175045

Lunar flyby over the mountains in Jämtland, Sweden

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Solar activity

Here's a couple of  photos of today's beautiful Sun. Lots of nice activities going on despite the fact that the Sun is heading for a activity minimum in the solar cycle. Including a closeup shot of today's big beautiful prominence.  Taken using a Lunt LS80THa telescope with a PointGrey Grasshopper 3 camera.

Iridescent Clouds

Yesterday I saw some really colorful Iridescent clouds, one of my favorite cloud phenomena. These clouds are visible when parts of clouds are thin and have similar size droplets, diffraction can make them shine with colours like a corona. I like how the Sun was covered enough to be visible through and not totally overexposed.

Nikon D850 with Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8E
Exposure: 1/8000 sec. ISO 64 @ 112mm f/8

The Milky Way and the Northern Lights

During this time of the year, the Milky Way stretches from North East to North West in the sky, perfect position to combine our galaxy with a faint Aurora. If the Aurora is to bright and active, it will block the light from the Milky Way. This panoramic photo I took last week is a perfect example of what a faint Aurora and the Milky Way looks like together.

Nikon D850 with Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8
Exposure: 20 sec. ISO 1600 @ f/2.8

Heart and Soul nebulae

The astronomical nights is soon coming to an end. Last night we only had 2 hours of astronomical darkness so despite the Northern Lights (Photo of that is coming later) my main focus was to do some deep sky photography. My plan was to take photos of the Heart and Soul nebula since I haven't done them for quite some time and not with the Nikon D810A. All in all I'm quite happy with the result.

Photo was taken with a Nikon D810A, Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8E @ 135mm f/4. Exposure 45 x 60 seconds for a total exposure of 45 minutes at ISO 1600. Stacking and calibration (Darks, flats and bias frames) was done in PixInsight, final processing in Photoshop.

Colors of the Moon

In this photo taken on the 24th of March 2018, I've exaggerated the colors on the lunar surface. The different colors correspond to real differences in the chemical makeup of the lunar surface - blue hues reveal titanium rich areas while orange and purple colors show regions relatively poor in titanium and iron.

This is a single exposure and no tracking was used. This night we had exceptional good air conditions with very good seeing.

Nikon D850, Nikkor AF-S 600mm f/4 + TC-17E II
1/80 sec. ISO 64 @ 1000mm f/8

Rare colorful clouds

Yesterday, one hour before sunset, I did see some colorful clouds in the opposite direction of the Sun (At the Anti solar point). I never seen colored clouds there before so I had a hard time figuring out if they were polar stratospheric clouds or iridescent clouds. The colored clouds slowly faded away as the sun set so I thought it might be iridescent clouds, but I never seen them opposite of the Sun before.

When I returned home I contacted Les Cowley at OPOD (http://www.atoptics.co.uk) to get his opinion of these clouds and he guessed that it's tropospheric iridescent clouds. He's never seen them opposite the sun before so this is probably very rare.

Always exciting to see a new phenomena, perfect ending for 2017.

Happy new year everyone!

Standing on the edge to the universe

Here's a mosaic image I've made from six shots taken on the 26th of September this year. With this projection of the sky I like the depth in the image and how the Milky Way with its reflections forms a complete circle in the image. The autumn is high season for shooting the Milky Way here in the northern hemisphere, so hopefully we'll get som more clear dark night ahead for more shots of the Milky Way.

Nikon D850 with Nikon AF-S 14-24mm
NiSi Natural Night Filter

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