Zodiacal Light from Loen, Norway

[TakMan]

Hi All,

Had a week in Norway, had one decent night binocular observing for a few hours.... thought this was cloud(!) to start with for the first hour, until I realised that:

1) It was not moving and

2) It 'joined' the Milky Way at a 'funny angle'

....although it wasn't so pronounced as what the camera was able to capture, that's my excuse anyway!

Hotel Alexandra, Loen, Norway (61 Degrees North) 1.50am Local Time, 15th August, 2013

Nikon D3 and Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8

800ISO, 20sec exposures, 24mm focal length, f/2.8

Taken on a small velbon 'table top' tripod with a shutter release cable

x4 NEF RAW files converted to 16BIT Tiff files in Adobe Lightroom.

Aligned and stacked in Nebulosity3

Simple 'Levels and Curves' in Photoshop CS5 with a small amount of sharpening and colour boost.

Also tried to tone down the light flares that came from the hotel (bottom right) ;-(

Annotated PDF included showing what is in the frame.

Zodiacal Light

A good piece here:

http://www.skyandtel...e/16987266.html

People used to think this eerie light originated from unknown phenomena in Earth’s upper atmosphere. But today we understand it as sunlight reflecting off dust grains that move in outer space. These grains are thought to be left over from the process that created our Earth and the other planets of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago.

These dust grains in space spread out from the sun in the same flat disc of space inhabited by Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and the other planets in our sun’s family. This flat space around the sun – the plane of our solar system – translates on our sky to a narrow pathway called the ecliptic. This is the same pathway traveled by the sun and moon as they journey across our sky.

The pathway of the sun and moon was called the Zodiac or Pathway of Animals by our ancestors in honor of the constellations seen beyond it. The word zodiacal stems from the word Zodiac.

In other words, the zodiacal light is a solar system phenomenon. The grains of dust that create it are like tiny worlds – ranging from meter-sized to micron-sized – densest around the immediate vicinity of the sun and extending outward beyond the orbit of Mars. Sunlight shines on these grains of dust to create the light we see. Since they lie in the flat sheet of space around the sun, we could – in theory – see them as a band of dust across our entire sky, marking the same path that the sun follows during the day. And indeed there are sky phenomena associated with this band of dust, such as the gegenschein. But seeing such elusive sky phenomena as the gegenschein is difficult. Most of us see only the more obvious part of this dust band – the zodiacal light – in either spring or fall.

The name false dawn originated with the 12th century Persian astronomer, mathematician, and poet Omar Khayyam. In the 200th verse of his poem The Rubaiyat, he wrote:

It’s beautiful to imagine that people stood where you might stand – outside on autumn morning, gazing eastward in the cool of predawn – and saw what you might also see: the false dawn, or zodiacal light.

Hope you like...

Clear skies,

Damian

Zodiacal Light_annotated.pdf

[wxsatuser]

Excellent pic. :icon_salut:

[laser_jock99]

Nice photo- but are you sure this is Zodiacal Light. My two reasons for asking are 1) in the lower left it seems to go in front of the hill. 2) The light is not in the Zodiac constellations (i.e. Taurus & Aries) nearby. By definition the light can only be seen along the line of the ecliptic?

[TakMan]

Thanks wxsatuser.

Yes, you have a good point 'laser_jock99'....

As for point 1, I believe that is another lens flare from the hotel lights (I was hiding behind a bench as best I could!) - the other two are to the right and they form a line, so that would account for that.... they got bigger and brighter as they moved across the frame.

As for point 2, well I'm not sure either....?

It was not a searchlight, it was not cloud (never moved), it was too bright for the Milky Way + no dark rifts that I would have expected to see if this bright... and it joined the Milky Way in Cygnus at a strange angle...

Light pollution....? Well not orange for a start.... plus quite a narrow triangle and straight up/slanted to the right, not like the domes of light here.... plus Norway has a population of just under 5 million with most people being in Oslo, Alesund, Bergen, etc - so miles and miles away.... Not the Northern Lights either - seen them to know !

Don't know what else it can be.... anyone else...?!

Damian

[laser_jock99]

Could have been a light pillar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pillar

But it needs to be a) very cold for the ice crystals to form & you need a light source.

[andyo]

whatever it is it makes for a very nice shot