I was driving home late yesterday afternoon when I saw this pretty sunset with sunrays streaming up the western sky, these are known as crepuscular rays :-)
 
I quickly stopped my car by a park and took some pictures; it was then that I noticed the lovely shadow and iridescent clouds close by the Sun, which was hidden behind the dark clouds.
 
Crepuscular rays are an optical phenomenon caused by the light of the Sun being blocked by the dark gaps in the clouds, usually by stratocumulus clouds. The rays can only appear if there are enough particles (ice crystals) in the atmosphere to diverge the unshadowed shafts of sunlight from the setting sun, which scatters the sunlight.
 
Once again, another amazing thing to see in your daytime sky, keep looking out for all these wonders,
​you never know what you’ll see and kept your camera handy at all times :-)
 
Image taken with just my point and shoot Canon G15 camera,
the exposure setting was 1/2000th second and ISO 80. 

I have just returned from a wonderful trip to Norway to see the Northern Lights on board one of the Hurtigruten ships called the MS Nordkapp that sailed from Bergen to Kirkenes (top of Norway) and back to Bergen.
 
The scenery was just stunning but what I was so taken with was the lighting from the Sun, in Australia our sunlight is very strong but in Norway it was so soft and crisp, just so perfect for a photographer to take beautiful pictures.
 
Every time I took an image with the Sun in the picture it would softly flare with my lens, I really liked this, as with our Sun in Australia there is no way this would happen, as it would just saturate the sensor in the camera!
 
My main purpose for the trip was to capture the stunning Auroras which I successfully did, please see my Astro blogs for the dates of the 7th and 10th of March.  But I was also on the lookout for some of those special atmospheric phenomenon which you get in icy skies…. and yes, I’m happy to say I managed to capture some of these also.
 
One is of a Sun Pillar with the glorious colours of a sunset, the other is a full solar halo with sundogs, the other ones are of a beautiful soft Sun flare in an early afternoon sky (I know it’s a lens flare but its pretty).  And finally a sunset image from the Hertigruten ship with golden Sun glitters on the water.
 
What a beautiful country Norway is, hopefully I may visit this lovely land again in the future, it is such a shame that Australia is so far away, but it was worth the days of travel to get there :-)
 
All images were taken along the coastline of Norway with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens on the deck of the moving ship. 

~ Look out for interesting solar phenomena during the Day ~ 
 
I’m always on the lookout for optical atmospheric phenomena in the daytime sky that’s usually caused by light from the Sun reflecting and refracting on particles such as ice, dust, smoke ect, in our Earths atmosphere.
 
The four images above are some of the happenings viewed in very cold skies (-15 to -21 degrees Celsius) on my recent trip through the waterways and Fjords of Norway on board one of the Hurtigruten ship the MS Nordkapp.
 
Sun Pillar: I’ve only ever seen two of these in my life and this one had all the stunning pink, purple and orange colours of sunset.  It’s caused by a vertical shaft of light that extends upward and sometimes downward from the Sun, they are usually associated with thin, high-level cirrus and cirrostratus clouds that have horizontally hexagonal orientated plates of ice crystals…very pretty to see.
 
Solar Halo and Sundogs are also an ice crystal phenomena which are seen in the same sort of sky as Sun pillars but this time the ice crystals behave like prisms and mirrors refracting and reflecting the sunlight between there faces sending light in particular directions and producing the famous 22 degree halo around the Sun.  The sundogs on either side (real name parhelia) are also results of these shape ice crystals.
 
The sunset image with the golden glitters on the water, is another amazing image because all those tiny golden glitters are mini Suns reflected on the water, so next time you see these things take a photo.
Our world is such an incredible place with lots to see if only we take a bit more time to look!!!
Go on, see what you can find :-)
 
For further information about these incredible features in the sky please go to the websites below:
https://www.atoptics.co.uk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_(optical_phenomenon)
https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/optical-phenomenon.html

~ Amazing Auroras ~

The sky all around our ship just suddenly exploded into bright curtains of light last night with the most amazing pulsating auroras that were all over the sky.  I’ve never see anything like this in all my life, the huge twisting curtains of lights waved and danced all over the sky, it was a breathtaking experience that I will never forget…ever :-)

I’m currently on board the Hurtigruten’s ship MS Nordkapp in Norway and I knew that we were going to get a stream of plasma from the Sun from that coronal hole that had opened up a few days ago (thanks to the Spaceweather.com website) and our ship just happened to be at sea between Skjervoy and Tromso when it hit our atmosphere.
How incredible was that!!!

Images taken with a Canon 70D camera on a tripod and a cable release, exposures were for only 2.6 seconds because the aurora were so bright with,  ISO5000 and ISO6400, I used a Tokina 11-16mm wide field lens, set at 11mm and f2.8.
What an absolutely magnificent experience this has been!

Over the last couple of days we have had these incredible thunderstorms hit south east Queensland and experienced spectacular displays of lightning that blaze all over the sky accompanied by deafening cracks and booms of thunder…its all been so exciting to watch every evening :-)
 
The image above was taken on the 13th February with a Canon 70D camera and an 18-400mm Tamron lens set at 19mm on a tripod with a cable release. I just set the images to 5 second exposures and do continues shooting as there’s no way I could catch them any other way.  (ISO100)
 
The second image below was taken on the 11th February with the same camera and lens also set at 19mm, but the exposure was only 0.3 second as there was so much light in the sky from the lightning…it was awesome!

It was a real disappointment that the east coast of Australia missed out on viewing the total eclipse of the Moon because of heavy rain, but late yesterday afternoon a beautiful rainbow was briefly on show with its reflection in the water to lighten my spirits :-)
 
Image was taken on the 3rd February 2018 at home with a Canon G15 camera set on manual focus and auto exposure.

I captured these pretty coloured coronas’ around the moon in the early hours of this morning
with just my camera and telephoto lens.
 
I’m trying to encourage people to not only look at the lunar eclipse tomorrow night, but also to try and capture some images themselves with their camera equipment even if there are some clouds in the sky.
 
We are so lucky here in Australia to see the whole event, that is, if the weather is kind to us :-)
 
Images taken on the 30th January 2018 with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens on a camera tripod, the corona image was a 5 second exposure @35mm, the ISO was 100. The cloudy image was a 6 second exposure @100mm and ISO100. The lunar image was a 1/160th second exposure @400mm and ISO100.

I got such a surprise when I looked out the window and seen these three remarkable cloud formations covering the whole sky.  I thought they may have been contrails from an aircraft but they just seemed to be too large for that, but I may be wrong about that!
​
Also, the main one seems to be sprouting away from some cumulus cloud near the horizon with a separate one branching away.
 
There must have been some really strong wind shears up there high in the atmosphere because after about 10 minutes all three formations started to disperse and started to look like three delicate feathers floating across the sky…it was quite spectacular to see :-)
 
The three images were taken over a period of 10 minutes with a Canon 70D camera and a Sigma 10-20mm set at 14mm, then I used a Tamron 10-17mm wide lens set at 10mm and for the third image a fisheye Tamron 11-16mm lens set at 11mm, the ISO was set at 100 for all three images…. I had to run very quickly to get all the different lenses as the clouds were changing shape very fast!

This is the first clear day in 2018 that I’ve been able to take a picture of the Sun, there are absolutely no markings on the solar surface and it’s very bland indeed, but how beautiful it becomes when it sets over the Scarborough Point Marina with the golden colours of sunset through the masts of the boats :-)
​
Both images were taken on the 7th January 2018 with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens, for the full solar disc image I added a 2x teleconverter and a glass solar filter to the front lens for safe imagining of the Sun.

A beautiful solar halo appeared high up in our summertime sky, at this time of the year it’s very hot here in Queensland, with huge thunderstorms rolling in nearly every afternoon so I was very lucky to capture this lovely halo before the rain started to fall…

These halos are quite special as they are made up of millions of tiny ice crystals in the high cirrus cloud that reflect and refract the Suns light to produce an amazing 22-degree ring around the Sun…now that’s quite awesome!
Another amazing thing about this phenomenon is that they are so personal, just like a rainbow; everybody see them differently because of their angle of view or the different size of the ice crystals from where they are standing.

If you would like to know more about how these solar halo’s form then please go to Les Cowley’s excellent website called Atmospheric Optics at: http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/circ2.htm

If you want to be blown away by the beauty and science of atmospheric optics then go to the main website at: http://www.atoptics.co.uk

Have a Happy New Year everyone :-)
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My image was taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Canon 10-20mm lens set at 10mm, the exposure was 1/800th second and ISO100.