Deep-Sky Auroras - Magisk høstkveld i Nord-Norge

After yet another warm and sunny day here in Northern Norway, I went out yesterday evening simply to enjoy the beautiful night. The evenings are still warm, and as the sun sets, the trees on the mountain-slopes are glowing in yellow and red. We are in the middle of the beautiful time when summer turns to autumn.

Not long after sunset, the first brighter stars appeared in the night sky and Jupiter was shining like a bright beacon above Tromsø in the east. The red planet Mars could be seen above the mountains in the north and the Milky Way stretched across the deep-blue sky with the summer constellations still high.

As the skies got darker, the Andromeda Galaxy could be seen - a beautiful sight long-missed during the midnight-sun period. Around midnight, I pointed by binoculars to the rich Milky Way region where comet Garradd is currently to be found and was surprised that is was possible to see with simple binoculars.

At the same time, faint whisps and patches, like of smoke, could all of a sudden be seen high up, mostly right above my head or somewhat to the south-west. I pointed my camera, equipped with a wide-angle lens, to the greenish patches and took some exposures and was surprised when I saw what the camera had registered. Visually, it looked like very faint auroras without much structure, but my camera saw something else than me - deep sky auroras!

The Milky Way and deep-sky auroras

 

Deep-sky auroras is a display of northern lights that is hardly visible to the eye, but with the camera these auroras are far more impressive! As Dr. Tony Philips discribes "they appear at high latitudes when geomagnetic activity is low" and the connection can be seen on the leading web-page on space-weather: http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=02&month=09&year=2011

Auroras and the Milky Way