Lichens with Jupiter and lightpollution

Bright planet Jupiter in the night sky on this clear and cold evening. In the foreground is a birch with lava in different colors as I have used UV light to create fluorescence. Lichens on birch are usually harmless, superficial organisms that use the bark as a base without damaging the tree, often a sign of clean air. Common species include blue lichen and various crust lichens. Lichens do not penetrate the bark, do not cause rot and can benefit biodiversity by offering food to insects. The bright night sky is due to light pollution, caused by excessive or misdirected artificial night lighting, disrupting ecosystems, disrupting the circadian rhythm of humans and animals and obscuring the starry sky. It is a rapidly increasing environmental problem that negatively affects biodiversity, insect and bird migration patterns, and can be counteracted by targeted, warm white lighting, motion sensors and timers

Colors in the dark from a burial ground

The view from the ground, the small things. Standing at a historical site, old burial ground from the Iron Age. The stoned ones moved by the people creating the burial ground. At the stones moss and lichens grow, some very colorful in UV light. 

What are lichens?

Lichens are miniature ecosystems made of fungus and an algae and/or cyanobacteria. These different life forms work so closely together that the algae or cyanobacteria actually sits inside the fungus. The algae or cyanobacteria provide the fungus with sugars made from sunlight, and the fungus provides the home. Lichens look like spots or clumps of colour, like someone has splashed paint onto a branch of a tree. Their colours range from green to brown to white to russet red. Even in these colours, lichens can be understated additions to tree trunks and rocks, and you might miss them at first glance. There are many types of lichen but they only grow in three ways. They can be branched like tiny shrubs, they can have crinkly little leaves or they can grow like a crust on a surface.

Mosses are small, non-vascular, flowerless plants that form dense green clumps or mats, usually in damp places, lacking true roots, stems, and leaves but having root-like rhizoids and simple leaf-like structures. They absorb water and nutrients directly through their surfaces, reproduce via spores, and are vital for soil stabilization, water retention, and creating microhabitats, acting as an important link in ecosystems.

In the sky a faint green light visible below the Big Dipper. According to Spaceweather.com it is SOLSTICE STORM IN PROGRESS: A minor G1-class geomagnetic storm is in progress on Dec. 21st. Why? Earth's magnetic field is connecting to the sun's (SWx jargon: "BsubZ is pointing south"), giving the solar wind an unimpeded path into our magnetosphere. Arctic sky watchers should be alert for auroras.

A closer look at cliff and stones in fluorescence, also lichens. The blue stones are probably fluorite, the orange cliff is feldspar and golden lichens. Lichens fluoresce in "gold" (yellow/orange) due to natural pigments like xanthones and atranorin, especially under UV light, revealing hidden colors not seen in daylight. Feldspars crystallize from magma, this area was vulcanic 1,9 billion years ago.

In the sky bright planet Jupiter and a lot of airglow, even some faint aurora borealis.

 

Airglow Aurora and Big Dipper

Heavy airglow and faint aurora borealis with the big dipper in the sky.

On planet earth you see fluorescence in water and lichens.

Airglow is a faint emission of light by a planetary atmosphere. In the case of Earth's atmosphere, this optical phenomenon causes the night sky never to be completely dark, even after the effects of starlight and diffused sunlight from the far side are removed. This phenomenon originates with self-illuminated gases and has no relationship with Earth's magnetism or sunspot activity, causing aurorae.

The Big Dipper is an asterism consisting of seven bright stars of the constellation Ursa Major six of them are of second magnitude and one, Megrez, of third magnitude. Four define a "bowl" or "body" and three define a "handle" or "head". It is recognized as a distinct grouping in many cultures. The North Star (Polaris), the current northern pole star and the tip of the handle of the Little Dipper (Little Bear), can be located by extending an imaginary line through the front two stars of the asterism, Merak and Dubhe. This makes it useful in celestial navigation.

 

Golden lichens and colorful moss in fluorescence, a macro view and in the north Aurora Borealis.

Caloplaca marina, the orange sea lichen, is a crustose, placodioid lichen. It has wide distribution, and can be found near the shore on rocks or walls.

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