Bright NLC in moonlight

Looked out the living room window and saw bright noctilucent clouds low in the sky. Packed up cameras etc and jumped in the car and drove off. Chose a place with a low horizon in the north and easy to bring the equipment from the car. When I have just started preparing for the photo I hear steps in the dark and turn on the headlamp and also see a pair of eyes in the dark. After a while I see that it is a deer buck coming straight towards me. He comes very close and looks at me before he heads off, a powerful meeting in the dark.

In the sky the noctilucent clouds are low in the north but they are very bright and beautiful. The moon is up and creates nice moonlight over the landscape. Choose to do some timelapses and macro/widefield pictures, a nice night and the darkness is on its way back.

 

The Sun

 

Sunny days and the sun shows several sunspots and prominences. The images were taken with Ha and CaK filters, different wavelengths.

 

A CaK filter (Calcium K-line filter) is a specialized solar filter for telescopes that isolates light at a specific wavelength of 393.3 nm in the deep violet/near ultraviolet (UV) spectrum. The filter is used in astronomy to observe and photograph the sun, as it makes the lower chromosphere and the border region with the photosphere visible.

 

H-alpha solar filterH-alpha solar filterA H-alpha (Hydrogen-alpha) solar filter is a specialized and advanced optical system that isolates an extremely narrow light wavelength of 656.28 nanometers (nm), which makes it possible to safely observe the sun's chromosphere. Unlike regular white light solar filters, an H-alpha solar filter shows dramatic details such as prominences (gas clouds ejected from the edge), filaments, sunspots and solar flares.

Milky Way

Imagine being able to see our own galaxy, the Milky Way, with the naked eye. But you have to get away from all light pollution, away from cities and even local lights. The moon must not interfere either. Wait to get night vision (10-40 min), no lamp on or mobile phone on - then you will see the Milky Way as a band across the sky. These pictures were taken in Gekland and there you can also see the center of the Milky Way, which is seen as a large cloud in the night sky. This part of the Milky Way cannot be seen from Sweden.

The center of our galaxy is located 26,000 light-years away from Earth in the Sagittarius constellation. It features a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*, which is about 4 million times heavier than our Sun. Thick cosmic dust hides this busy, star-packed region from normal view.

Astronomers estimate that the Milky Way contains between 100 and 400 billion stars. Because we are inside the galaxy and obscured by thick clouds of gas and dust, we can only roughly calculate the total by measuring the galaxy's mass and observing the movement of its stars