Glowing moss and fungi under the stars

Glowing moss and a little fungi under the stars.

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Fungi & Night Sky

A clear evening in the woods behind my house. Simply walking around looking for beautiful little objects is a pleasure. It is now mushroom season, and many of them fluoresce under UV light. These fungi are vital, acting as nature’s cleanup crew by breaking down dead wood and leaves, thereby returning nutrients to the soil.
What we pick and call a "mushroom" is merely the fruiting body. Beneath the ground lies a vast, intricate network of fungal threads known as mycelium. It is through this mycelium that the fungus absorbs water and nutrients from the soil.
Symbiosis with trees (Mycorrhiza): Many of our most common edible mushrooms live in symbiosis with forest trees. Through underground contact, they exchange services: the fungus provides the tree with water and minerals, while the tree supplies the fungus with sugars (carbohydrates) produced via photosynthesis.
The soil's kidneys: Fungi are extremely efficient at absorbing substances from the soil. Unfortunately, this means they can also take up and store environmental toxins, heavy metals, and radioactive substances (such as cesium) if they grow in contaminated soil.
Visible in the starry sky are the constellations Perseus, Cassiopeia, and Auriga.

 

Beautiful prominence

 A quick look at the sun between clouds and the view was wonderful. A very nice prom at the limb.

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The chromosphere of the sun - high res photo.

The chromosphere is the thin middle layer of the Sun's atmosphere, located just above the visible surface (photosphere) and below the outer atmosphere (corona). It comes from the Greek word chroma, meaning color, because it shines with a bright red glow during total solar eclipses. The red color comes from glowing hydrogen gas, specifically the hydrogen-alpha (H-alpha) light wavelength. It extends roughly 2,000 to 4,000 kilometers (about 1,200 to 2,500 miles) above the solar surface. Unlike inner layers, it gets hotter as you move outward, rising from about 4,000 K near the bottom to 10,000 K (or higher) at the top. Possible to see/photograph: Spicules: Narrow, grass-like jets of plasma that shoot upwards from the bottom layer before falling back down.

Prominences and filaments: Huge, cool loops and clouds of gas held above the surface by magnetic fields. Visibility: It is normally hidden by the blinding brightness of the photosphere below, but it is visible during total solar eclipses or through special solar filters.

Photo taken with several photos stitched together as a high res photo of the sun.

Blue Trumpet Lichens and starry sky

 

Solar from Carpe Noctem Observatory

 

Partial Lunar Eclipse from Sweden (with corona)

 

A very low moon

A very low moon in the sky, barely visible from the observatory. I didn't think there would be any sharp pictures but they turned out better than I thought. I just managed to take a picture of the moon before it disappeared behind the trees.

The close-up shows the crater Gassendi is a large lunar impact crater feature located at the northern edge of Mare Humorum. The crater was named after French astronomer Pierre Gassendi by the IAU in 1935.

Short timelapse of the partial solar eclipse from Sweden

 

Red clover with a aphids on it a clear night

A clear night and I came across this red clover. I illuminated it with UV light and used a macro/wide angle lens to capture the fluorescent colors and the starry sky. Then I noticed the aphids that were hanging out under the flower. Later I took an even closer look at the flower with a more powerful macro lens 2.5x.

POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS SUNSPOT

A bonus day of partly cloudy weather over the Carpe Noctem observatory. I got to watch and photograph the sun through thin clouds but it was still nice. A little curious about the active area around sunspot group 4513 which according to spaceweather.com is a POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS SUNSPOT: Sunspot 4513 has developed a 'beta-gamma-delta' magnetic field that harbors energy for X-class solar flares. Unlike Thursday's M8-class flare, which missed Earth, future flares will not miss. We're in the strike zone now, according to spaceweather.com.

Some of the images show this area, you can see as a white tear in the sunspot. 

Perseid meteor shower 2026 from Sweden

Photographing Perseid meteors. The radiant of the meteor shower appears to come from the constellation Perseus in the sky. And it stands high in the sky from midnight when the peak of the shower is supposed to occur. My colleague and I went out to the east coast with as little light pollution as possible and this year without any moon to interfere so the conditions were nice. It was not astronomically dark but good enough to see even faint meteors and the Milky Way was clearly visible to the south. I chose to photograph mostly to the east and south and got a couple of nice pictures with the Milky Way. I set the camera to rolling exposures, but then you have to hope that some bright meteor comes along. I also photographed with a macro/wide angle lens and got most of the meteors. In some cases I used UV light so that some objects fluoresced in different beautiful colors. Very dry on the rock outcrops and previous water puddles had dried out of masses and algae etc. dried on the edge which fluoresced masses in UV, mostly in blue.

There were several nice pictures, one that was published as NASA's picture of the day, and a nice night on the coast.

 

Nice prominences

Nice prominences the other day.

 

Waiting for the night to fall..

Waiting for the night to fall, the blue hour..

 

Crazy many satellites - destroying the night sky!

 

Astronomy Picture of the Day #24

 I´m honored with my 24th NASA APOD today showing Perseid meteors beside the Milk Way taken earlier this week during the peak.

APOD: 2026 August 15 – Bright Perseids from Sweden

Meteor shower

The Perseid meteor shower peaked on the night of August 12-13. So after the partial solar eclipse, a colleague and I went to the east coast to photograph this. The meteor shower is created when the Earth passes through a trail of space debris and particles left behind by comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. When these particles (often no larger than a grain of sand) fall into the Earth's atmosphere, they travel at about 59 kilometers per second and burn up, creating the luminous streaks in the sky.

The picture shows 5 meteors over the Baltic Sea. In the foreground is a close-up (macro) of detailed lichen in UV light (blue and orange) and also a diving beetle (visible in yellow in UV)! Most species are dark, oval and flat to reduce water resistance. Their hind legs act as powerful, hair-covered oars that they use to move through the water. Because they breathe air, they carry an oxygen bubble under their coverts when they dive. This bubble acts as a kind of "physical gill" and is replenished when the ram backs up to the surface, tail first.

Partial Solar Eclipse from Sweden

Partial solar eclipse from Sweden. It was stressful to find a place for this. The clouds rolled in and I headed off in the car towards clearer areas. Finally, when the eclipse had already started, I found a place by the water with less clouds. I could see the eclipse with the naked eye and photographed it without a filter. There is a risk of both my eyes and the camera sensor being damaged, but everything worked out.

Seasons first Aurora

The sun has been very active lately with several CMEs creating auroras around midnight in my hometown. It doesn't get dark until midnight, but then a green arc and some pillars were visible at times. The moonrise was beautiful too.

Prominence

 

It was partly cloudy and I took the opportunity to look through the solar telescope between the clouds and saw a nice prominence on the edge of the sun. I managed to take a photo before it got cloudy. The prominence is bigger than our planet Earth, a beautiful sight!

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.