Astrophoto: Planet Aurora

By Nancy Atkinson - February 27, 2013 03:23 PM UTC | Planetary Science

I love these '

Polar Planet Effect

' images, and this one is awesome. Photographer Martin Stojanovski traveled from Macedonia to Finland during an

AuroraTweetup event

in early February 2013 to try and capture the aurora. And he really wanted to try doing one of these "planet" pictures.

"This was one of the photos that I really wanted to create on my aurora trip during #AuroraTweetup and it came together at last," Martin said via email. "It is really hard to get the final result as the aurora is so dynamic (it changes every second) and also the night sky is difficult for stitching, but the end result came up great. That night Aurora was amazing, and it got really bright and colorful from time to time, as our guide said that night the best of the season."

In this image the aurora stretches more than 120 degrees from side to side, and a faint glow go higher up towards zenith. It was created from 21 30-second exposures at f-4, 10mm ISO 1600. Image of the whole sky and foreground was taken at the Aurora Camp on Lake Inari in Finland.

He took some other great shots, too, like this one:

[caption id="attachment_100318" align="aligncenter" width="580"]

Aurora borealis over Lake Inari in Finland. Shot on 9th Feb. 2013 during #AuroraTweetup. Credit and copyright: Martin Stojanovski. [/caption]

See more images from his trip at

his website.

We featured another 'Polar Planet' image in our

astrophotos of the full Moon yesterday.

Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you're giving us permission to post them). Please explain what's in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com