Randall Peterman’s breathtaking auroral throwback to Norway 2018 has won our Photo of the Week on October 30, 2020.
Peterman said he captured the Northern Lights from Skagsanden Beach in the Lofoten Islands of Norway on February 26, 2018. Lofoten is an archipelago in the northern part of Norway.
“This eerie scene appeared at the wave-washed Skagsanden Beach in the Lofoten Islands of Norway,” he wrote. “A half-Moon behind me lit up the snow-covered mountains and beach.”
He used an Olympus OM-D E-M1, and the lens he used was an Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 EZ ED MSC, set to f/3.5 at 12mm. The exposure was 20 seconds.
Our runner-up this week was Grzegorz Gurdak, shooting the oh-so-photogenic Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex with Antares.
The colourful region of the sky is a beautiful subject to capture. The star in the yellow nebulous area is Antares, which is actually a binary star that includes a red supergiant. The red point at the top is Sigma Scorpii, a multiple star system. Between the two sits the a globular cluster, Messier 4. IC 4603 and IC 4604 provide the blue nebulosity left of centre, the latter being lit up by the star Rho Ophiuchi, which is also a multiple star system.
Gurdak said he shot the image from Bortle 2 skies near Killarney Provincial Park in Ontario on August 21, 2020. He said he used a Nikon D5100 and a Nikkor ED 80-200mm lens set at 80mm to capture the image. He captured three hours of exposures, 89 at 120 seconds each.
Prizes for the 2020-21 SkyNews Photo of the Week contest are sponsored by Sky-Watcher, Celestron, iOptron and The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. Click here for more details on the prize packages that will be awarded to the best photos this year.
