Colorful and wild La Silla sky
As Czech Photo Ambassador of European Southern Observatory, I had incredibly wonderful time under the La Silla Observatory sky on 19th/20th January 2015. This time it was far more interesting than I expected. The wonderful colors of airglow waves showed up in my camera immediately, as it was so strong this time. Capturing the beautiful part of the southern Milky way I also had lot of shooting stars up above. Morning zodiacal light rised up while some flashing – visible by eyes – occured low above the horizon. Looking back on the small screen of the camera I was just shocked. The powerful Red Sprites started to be produced by far thunderstorm. I finished the panorama and just tried to capture more of them. And I succeeded. So below is the result. What the unforgetable night!
Red Sprites at La Silla Observatory
The closest dome at the picture is 1,54-m Danish telescope. Just above the Magellanic clouds you can see large Vela nebula, which is unfortunately not visible by eyes due to its red color. Unbelievable strong airglow is produced by shining of nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen molecules in the Earth atmosphere. For capturin this picture was used Canon 6D, Samyang 24 mm, f2,8, ISO 10000, 28×10 s panorama (on tripod). The Red Sprites were captured with the same settings as the panorama.
This image you can download in full dimension as the ESO Picture of the week.
