Stunning noctilucent display from 14 July 2009 Leics, UK. This was such an intense display and so early compared to previous sightings, 10.30pm. There was lots of cloud cover too but such was the intensity of the electric blues that it made hardly any difference! Taken with Olympus E3 & 12-60mm SWD - Mark Humpage Elemental Photography- powered by SmugMug

Moon, planets, star trails, space shuttle, ISS & noctilucent. A selection from my night sky gallery.

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markhumpage > Startrail with a couple of Leonids captured on the evening/morning of 16th/17th November 2009. Height of the Leonid meteor shower and disappointed only to capture a couple. Set up Olympus E3 with 7-14mm lens on tripod, 15s exposure, F4.0 and captured continuous from 2100hrs on 16th through till 0700hrs on 17th. 9 hrs of earths motion, 2000 images put together in startrails software. Nice to capture the opposite curvature of the trails above and below the celestial equator.

markhumpage > Startrail taken at home on the clear night of Sept 09 2009. Started at 2000hrs and let camera capture exposure every 15s all night till sunrise on following day. Just under 2000 workable exposures run through startrails.de software, imported into Aperture for fine tuning.

Taken with Olympus E3, 7-14mm

markhumpage > International Space Station (ISS) captured passing the Leics, UK skyline 2100hrs_10 Sep 09. Jupiter can be seen just to the right of the lit tree and below the path of the ISS. Really pleased with the capture. The ISS came into view to the sth and it looked like a fireball as it moved twds the Eastern earth shadow. In the sky. F3.5, 213s ISO 200 captured with Oly E3 & 8mm fisheye.

markhumpage > Russian red skies come to Leicestershire, UK Thurs 9th July 2009. Captured with Olympus E3 dslr and 50-200mm lens.
In mid-June 2009, Russia's Sarychev Peak volcano erupted, hurling an enormous plume of ash and sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. This has produced some unusually colorful sunrises and sunsets around the northern hemisphere. Purple is one of the telltale colors of a volcanic sunset. Fine volcanic aerosols in the stratosphere scatter blue light which, when mixed with ordinary sunset red, produces a violet hue. Other signs to look for include a bright yellow "twilight arch" and long crepuscular rays and shadows

How do volcanoes turn the sky purple? Fine, sulfurous aerosols in the stratosphere scatter blue light. Blue mixes with ordinary sunset red to produce the lavender hue. It has been a full month since Sarychev Peak erupted and the purple is still being sighted on a regular basis from Russia, Canada, Iceland, northern-tier US states and many countries in Europe.

markhumpage > Stunning noctilucent display from 14 July 2009 Leics, UK. This was such an intense display and so early compared to previous sightings, 10.30pm. There was lots of cloud cover too but such was the intensity of the electric blues that it made hardly any difference! Taken with Olympus E3 & 12-60mm SWD

markhumpage > Midnight darkness turns to day from the glow of noctilucent clouds captured above the Leics skyline on June 17/18th 2009.

This remarkable photograph was taken at midnight and shows the rare phenomenon of 'night shining.' The shimmering clouds form at an altitude of around 55 miles above sea level and are made up of tiny ice droplets. Because they are so high up in the atmosphere the sun is able to illuminate the clouds from below the horizon.

Called 'noctilucent' clouds, which literally means 'night-shining' in Latin, they are normally spotted in polar regions during the summer months.

Noctilucent cloud formations are the highest on Earth where temperatures can plunge below -130C (-200F) and winds peak at 300mph. They appear in the mesosphere, which is between 30miles and 50miles above the Earth's surface.

Clouds are made up of ice crystals and scientists are baffled as to how these form in an arid layer that is several million times drier than the Sahara Desert. But their prevalence in the summer months might be one clue. Upwelling winds in the summertime carry water vapor from the moist lower atmosphere toward the mesosphere.

Apparently the water droplets also need dust particles to stick to to create the ice crystals. This could explain why the phenomenon was first recorded in 1885, two years after the Krakatoa eruption, when several tonnes of carbon dioxide, ash and dust were emitted into the atmosphere.
However scientists do not know why the clouds have become more common since then rather than fading away. They have speculated that debris from space may be the answer.

Taken with Olympus E3, 12-60mm SWD.

Stunning noctilucent display from 14 July 2009 Leics, UK. This was such an intense display and so early compared to previous sightings, 10.30pm. There was lots of cloud cover too but such was the intensity of the electric blues that it made hardly any difference! Taken with Olympus E3 & 12-60mm SWD