Starship Asterisk*

A Spiral Aurora over Iceland

Explanation: What's happened to the sky? Aurora! Captured late last month, this aurora was noted by Icelanders for its great brightness and quick development. The aurora resulted from a solar storm, with high energy particles bursting out from the Sun and through a crack in Earth's protective magnetosphere a few days later. Although a spiral pattern can be discerned, creative humans might imagine the complex glow as an atmospheric apparition of any number of common icons. In the foreground of the featured image is the Ölfusá River, while the lights illuminate a bridge in Selfoss City. Just beyond the low clouds is a nearly full Moon. The liveliness of the Sun -- and the resulting auroras on Earth -- is slowly diminishing as the Sun emerges from a Solar maximum of surface activity and evolves towards a historically more quite period in its 11-year cycle. In fact, solar astronomers are waiting to see if the coming Solar minimum will be as unusually quiet as the last one, where sometimes months would go by with no discernible sunspots or other active solar phenomena.

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All i can say is stunning. Guess one of the rewards for living in an extreme latitude. Some auroras this year have been visible from southern parts of Australia, and they have been awesome. Looks like we may have to wait a while for a repeat.

It is Shenron, here to grant our wish....I wish for WORLD PEACE!!!!!

Awesome Image.

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Absolutely stunning! Could you provide exposure info please?

PeterHers wrote:Absolutely stunning! Could you provide exposure info please?

Hi and Thanks

The photo was taken with Canon 5D Mark2 and 14mm f2.8, 1600 iso and 3 seconds of exposre

I saw this image last week and am very pleased to see it on APOD!

On a slightly related note, I hope one of the new Star Wars films has an aurora or maybe a space battle near a black hole.

I got pretty spoiled for warm weather living in Florida but I could just about handle the chilly clime of Selfoss if I could live under a tie dyed sky. Absolutely stunning!

It's almost as if each streak of light is a time-lapse photon – its energy unleashed right before our eyes. Electro-magnetic meteors. Very Cool!!