Jaw-Dropping Sunset Timelapse from Sweden

By Nancy Atkinson - June 09, 2014 10:42 AM UTC | Planetary Science

This is not your basic sunset timelapse! It combines a close-up view of the Sun with a solar telescope along with the landscape in the foreground. Astrophotographer Göran Strand from Sweden has been planning this photoshoot for a year, and it turned out spectacularly.

"Yesterday I went out to shoot a sunset I've planed since last summer," Göran said via email. "This time of the year, the Sun passes right behind a big radar tower if you stand at the Swedish National Biathlon Arena in Östersund. The radar tower is located about 8 km away from the arena in a small village called Ås. I shoot the movie using my solar telescope to capture the structures on the Sun. The timing was perfect and the Sun looked really nice since it was full of sunspots and big filaments."

Note the size of the Earth inserted for reference.

Below is a beautiful image taken a few days earlier by Göran of the setting Sun:

See more of Göran's work at his

website

,

Facebook

, or

Twitter

.

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