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.

 

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