APOD: A Starry Night of Iceland (2020 Jan 05)

[APOD Robot]

A Starry Night of Iceland

Explanation: On some nights, the sky is the best show in town. On this night, the sky was not only the best show in town, but a composite image of the sky won an international competition for landscape astrophotography. The featured winning image was taken in 2011 over Jökulsárlón, the largest glacial lake in Iceland. The photographer combined six exposures to capture not only two green auroral rings, but their reflections off the serene lake. Visible in the distant background sky is the band of our Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy. A powerful coronal mass ejection from the Sun caused auroras to be seen as far south as Wisconsin, USA. As the Sun progresses away from its current low in surface activity toward a solar maximum a few years away, many more spectacular images of aurora are expected.

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[Iksarfighter]

Hi,
Is this sky circle polar centered ?
TY,
Manu

[orin stepanek]

Beautiful Photo for a Sunday!

aurora_vetter_1080.jpg (27.83 KiB) Viewed 3273 times

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Beautiful Photo for a Sunday!

Unfortunately, after yesterday's discussion all I can think about is guacamole, mold & that mystery pack in the Bundy family fridge.

[jimbo48]

Hi,
Is this sky circle polar centered ?
TY,
Manu

In my opinion, yes it would most likely be centered over the pole ... but I am far from qualified to say.

[Chris Peterson]

Hi,
Is this sky circle polar centered ?
TY,
Manu

No. The auroral oval is defined in a complex way by the interaction between the Earth's magnetic field and charged particles from the Sun. The oval is always offset from the magnetic pole towards the night side of the Earth.

In this image, we're only seeing a very short segment of that oval, distorted by the wide angle of the shot. Although the image is made facing to the north, we're not seeing the auroral oval circling around anything. It's more of a linear band across the sky.

[Iksarfighter]

Hi,
Is this sky circle polar centered ?
TY,
Manu

No. The auroral oval is defined in a complex way by the interaction between the Earth's magnetic field and charged particles from the Sun. The oval is always offset from the magnetic pole towards the night side of the Earth.

In this image, we're only seeing a very short segment of that oval, distorted by the wide angle of the shot. Although the image is made facing to the north, we're not seeing the auroral oval circling around anything. It's more of a linear band across the sky.

OK TY

[neufer]

---

Most auroras occur in a band known as the "auroral zone", which is typically 3° to 6° wide in latitude and between 10° and 20° from the geomagnetic poles at all local times (or longitudes), most clearly seen at night against a dark sky. A region that currently displays an aurora is called the "auroral oval", a band displaced towards the night side of the Earth.

The furthest away one can observe an aurora is from a distance of ~10° of latitude.

(There are plenty of small loops one can observer fully.)