Sunset colours

On clear and chilly Monday evening I was walking out on company parking place, half an hour after sunset. In the opposite side of sun, earth shadow and belt of Venus were rising above horizon. The sky was strangely colored around sun, in a large area.

Light pink hue was easily visible. Normally during sunset sky turns first to orange and then red, even deep red. I remembered that earlier this year there was a volcanic eruption at Mount Kasatochi, located at Aleutian islands.

I assume this event could cause the colors, but I sill am not 100% sure... During the autumn reports of such colorful sunsets are received from Sweden. Many reports also have been coming from central Europe.

Before this eruption (if I correctly remember) was the famous mount Pinatubo eruption. Huge amount of aerosols and small dust particles were blown into upper atmosphere.

Trip to Kilpisjärvi

During mid-september 2008 I had a nature photography trip to northern Finland, i.e. Kilpisjärvi. In addition to landscape and nature details photographs, I captured some images of atmospheric phenomenon. I am again waiting the next opportunity to get there with my camera, so beautiful the landscape is there when the lightning conditions are good...

Auroras above lake Kilpisjärvi.

Sunpillar above lake Kilpisjärvi.

Misty morning and fogbow.

Swans and nightsky

Yesterday it was a clear sky on the evening already, later on at 11pm I went out to take a photo of Pleiades - M45. My Purpose was to get it composed with part of the public building. I need to try photographing again, since I was now too late. Position of Pleiades was not suitable.

When returning home, I got a really nice "surprise", so to speak... Aircrafts are flying quite a frequently in this area (i.e. Espoo) - so I understood there was another jet flying on the sky. First impression was wrong, oh boy! The "plane" was moving too fast - to be normal one. It was a migrating swan, against the thousands of stars on the nightsky. Below the swan there was a lit public building, a local church (mormonikirkko). Those very powerful and narrow light beams hit the swan from below and made it almost glow magically in the night... The situation was passed away so quickly, but damn it was so beautiful sight! I was happy to return home (although I was a bit suffering from cold weather).

Halo observing

Last few months has been time when only few halos I have been able to notice (per one month). Due to daily work, I cannot observe the skies all-time. Yesterday (9th Oct 2008) I saw few nice common halos at Espoo. 22 ring, 22 upper tangent arc and circumzenithal arc were visible.

I store all my halo observations to Havainto.net -database. If images are available, I'll upload those there also. Halo observing is great fun, just remember to watch at the sky...

Autumn lightning

Late today evening it was nice again to see some natures beautiful lights. At coastal area of southern Finland, there is a rainshower passing by. Some lightning is currently visible behind the clouds. Unfortunately no direct lightning strikes are seen, since the thunderstorm is not very "active". No sounds were heard at my hometown Espoo.

One nice occasion was that, at the same time it started to rain harder, and the "Big Dipper" was visible through the clear cloud area. I will continue to follow situation for a while, at local FLC -lightning radars...

Accessory order ongoing

Another set of dew prevention stuff, plus double crosshair-EP for drift aligning. Waiting for Kendrick 1.25" strip and Antares 10mm to arrive beginnig at next week...

Partial solar eclipse

This time the observation I had to visually only. No possibilities to photograph it due to busy daily work, unfortunately. It still was a beatiful sight. Sky was partially cloudy. I observed it in southerh Finland (Espoo to be precise), around 12:40 local time (GMT +3h). Approximately 40% of the sun disk area was blocked by the moon.

These following pages contains solar images around the world:
Spaceweather.com
NASA solar eclipse page