Starship Asterisk*

Meteors and Aurora over Germany

Explanation: This was an unusual night. For one thing, the night sky of August 11 and 12, earlier this week, occurred near the peak of the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. Therefore, meteors streaked across the dark night as small bits cast off from Comet Swift-Tuttle came crashing into the Earth's atmosphere. Even more unusually, for central Germany at least, the night sky glowed purple. The red-blue hue was due to aurora caused by an explosion of particles from the Sun a few days before. This auroral storm was so intense that it was seen as far south as Texas and Italy, in Earth's northern hemisphere. The featured image composite was built from 7 exposures taken over 26 minutes from Ense, Germany. The Perseids occur predictably every August, but auroras visible this far south are more unusual and less predictable.

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Nice! If you are not interested in meteors you can look at the aurora, and if you're not interested in the aurora you can look at the meteors. If you like both, this picture sure has a lot to offer!

There was a really bright aurora over southern Sweden a couple of days ago. No, I didn't see it, I was asleep. But I can't keep this photo from you, taken from the location of a famous stone ship in the very southernmost part of Sweden:


Nice, eh? I love the colors of this aurora. As for Ale's stones (Swedish: Ales stenar, and the name Ale is pronounced Aah-leh), it is a stone ship from the seventh century B.C.


The body of water you can see in the picture of Ale's stones in the Baltic Sea, due south of the stone monument. So the aurora picture over the ancient stones was taken looking in the opposite direction.

Ann

Ann wrote: ↑Wed Aug 14, 2024 4:42 am Nice! If you are not interested in meteors you can look at the aurora, and if you're not interested in the aurora you can look at the meteors. If you like both, this picture sure has a lot to offer!

I like both! We've had a heck of a monsoon season this summer in Colorado, so rain every afternoon and evening. Not so great for astronomy, but no major wildfires, so that's all right. Anyway, two nights ago I left a camera snapping 10 second exposures all night, and caught the aurora (mostly behind clouds) and a nice Perseid (the radiant is just to the left of the trail). Got lucky with some holes in the clouds.
_

The Image from August 14, 2024 of the aurora over Germany, reminds me a lot of the German flag! Such a cool image after seeing that! The "black", "red/pink" and "yellow"! What a cool coincidence!