Like a fallen angel
View from Deštná after moonrise…
Just three days before Christmas 2016, on 21st December, there was a slight chance to catch an aurora from the Czech Republic. It was cloudy, so I decided to try a luck from
Eagle mountains of the country. Unfortunately, the aurora didn’t appear in the end, but I took a night walk on the mountains anyway. As I walked up to the summit called
Velká Deštná (can be translated as “Rainy peak”), it was harder and harder due to deeper snow. It took me more than an hour to get there but it was worth it. Deštná is not typically bald summit as many other peaks around, but surrounded by low trees. So after a the walk I just fell down on the snow, surrounded by the trees and took a look in the sky. Even if there was no aurora, the clear skies were full of
prominent airglow, visible even by naked eyes. Lying tired on the freezing snow and watching the winter sky
full of bright stars, I felt like a fallen angel who wasn’t strong enough to fly up there…
After a while I had to move on, cause the frost was stronger and stronger. So I woke up, went a bit off the summit and realized that the sky starts to be brighter. The last-quarter Moon rose up. The steps led me to the south, when I spotted a wonderful view over the sea of inversion illuminated by the Moon. The airglow was still so bright tha even in the moonlight was possible to capture it. For the first image used Canon 6D Baader IR modified, Samyang 24 mm, f2.8, ISO 8000, 26×15 seconds panorama from tripod. The second one is also panorama, captured with same settings, only with ISO 6400.
