Astronomy Picture of the Day -- A Starry Night of Iceland

NASA ^ | January 03, 2016 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: On some nights, the sky is the best show in town. On this night, the sky was not only the best show in town, but a composite image of the sky won an international competition for landscape astrophotography. The featured winning image was taken in 2011 over Jökulsárlón, the largest glacial lake in Iceland. The photographer combined six exposures to capture not only two green auroral rings, but their reflections off the serene lake. Visible in the distant background sky is the band of our Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy. A powerful coronal mass ejection from the Sun caused auroras to be seen as far south as Wisconsin, USA. Solar activity over the past week has resulted in auroras just over the past few days.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit: Stephane Vetter (Nuits sacrees); Rollover Annotation: Judy Schmidt]

[SunkenCiv]

The Big One

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[Norm Lenhart]

Guys, that looks awful familiar ;)

[ETL]

[Telepathic Intruder]

[Noob1999]

Wow! Just wow!

[TheOldLady]

Aaaah! Another pesky terrestrial view that turns out to be a stunner.
And clicking over to the APOD site, you can hover over the photo and
see the constellations outlined.

Great APOD, Mr. Civilizations. Thank you again for the post and ping.

[IronJack]

Wife and daughter just got back from Iceland. They were expecting a light show like this but it was overcast the whole time they were there ... Except the day they left.

[Boowhoknew]

Thank you, SunkenCiv, I love that when you put the cursor on the picture, the names of the constellations visable are shown

[SunkenCiv]

Barad-dur?

[SunkenCiv]

Yeah, that changing picture thing didn't look like it would work if reposted here, glad everyone checked it out. I actually like the regular Big One version, and I really don't need any photos around to remind me of how great winter is. Winter sucks. :') But that is really nice lookin'.

The *Other* Big One

[ETL]

[ETL]

Sorry for the over-sized image.

Here's a better one.

[TheOldLady]

Wow!

Thank you for making a copy of the hovered-over graphic
with the constellations labeled and showing. It’s great!

And so are you.