Northern Lights and faint Milkyway from Bjørnafjorden, Norway.

[Icesheet]

Landscape astrophotography is something I’m interested in getting into more. There were some faint Aurora recently so I decided to give it a go. This is a foreground stack of 3x180sec on foreground and 1x30sec for sky, Nikon D600 and Samyang 14mm. A half critical eye will show my blending needs work and of course the sky is quite noisy since it’s only one frame at fairly high ISO. Hopefully it’s still semi pleasing to the eye 😊

Edited March 25, 2021 by Icesheet

[Kon]

That's a great image!

[Icesheet]

9 minutes ago, Kon said:

That's a great image!

Thanks!

[Spikey]

Great sky for 1 image ! 30 seconds by me is just an orange mess 🤣

[Adreneline]

Really good photograph.

I love the balance of grassy foreground and sky with the magical Northern Lights and the Milky Way and the lights from the small town in the middle distance.

Brilliant composition.

Adrian

[carastro]

Looks great.  Oh so lucky to have the aurora.

Carole 

[Icesheet]

1 hour ago, Adreneline said:

Really good photograph.

I love the balance of grassy foreground and sky with the magical Northern Lights and the Milky Way and the lights from the small town in the middle distance.

Brilliant composition.

Adrian

Thanks Adrian! Wasn’t sure if the foreground maybe distracted from the sky. Glad you like it!

 

59 minutes ago, carastro said:

Looks great.  Oh so lucky to have the aurora.

Carole 

We don’t quite get it like Northern Norway here but does make its way down often enough. 

[FenlandPaul]

Super image - looks like with skies like that and your latitude, as well as some great locations, you’ll have some fantastic images ahead of you!

[Icesheet]

Thanks! Yeah, I’ve definitely not got an excuse in terms of possible locations. 

[Carbon Brush]

I live in a light polluted part of England, that does not get aurora very often. Even then it is usually cloudy. Well much of England is light polluted.
I can only gaze in wonder at your image. Hoping one day to see something like this. Criticism of the image composition - never.
Thank you for posting.

[Icesheet]

1 hour ago, Carbon Brush said:

I live in a light polluted part of England, that does not get aurora very often. Even then it is usually cloudy. Well much of England is light polluted.
I can only gaze in wonder at your image. Hoping one day to see something like this. Criticism of the image composition - never.
Thank you for posting.

Thank you for the kind words!
 

Thank you all for your comments. Makes me appreciate the opportunity I have here. Hopefully, I can get more similar in the future 👍🏻

[Mr Spock]

Nice looking image 👍

[Corncrake]

On 25/03/2021 at 10:28, Icesheet said:

 semi pleasing to the eye 😊

Wow! What can I say? That is just , , astonishingly perfect.

To have such little light to need to stack on the foreground, amazing, most of us need to do that to the sky whilst struggling with and cursing foreground illumination !!!!! What was the light source for it, just sky-glow/ambient ? Even the aurora is modest, just right, not dominant or over-powering !

and how did you manage to persuade the townsfolk to turn down their street lighting just right so as not to blow out your pic

Edited March 28, 2021 by Corncrake

[Icesheet]

50 minutes ago, Corncrake said:

Wow! What can I say? That is just , , astonishingly perfect.

To have such little light to need to stack on the foreground, amazing, most of us need to do that to the sky whilst struggling with and cursing foreground illumination !!!!! What was the light source for it, just sky-glow/ambient ? Even the aurora is modest, just right, not dominant or over-powering !

and how did you manage to persuade the townsfolk to turn down their street lighting just right so as not to blow out your pic

Really appreciate your comments  Yes, it was just ambient lighting although it didn't seem there was any light at the time! No artificial light used at all. Actually, I could probably have been doing with an even longer exposure for the foreground. I had to raise it a bit in lightroom to bring out some detail in the grass.  Here's a JPEG of the stacked foreground before lifting the exposure. I actually had more exposure of the sky but as you can see it washes out the detail and structure in the aurora hence only using one frame for sky.

 

There is quite a bit of light pollution in my area but get to the right spot and point the right way and it you're all good.

[Icesheet]

I even bumped into this curious bunch on the way home!