Night Flight with Reds
by Ralf Rohner
Title
Night Flight with Reds
Artist
Ralf Rohner
Medium
Photograph
Description
After beeing grounded for 2 month, I was finally able to fly again. Unfortunalely, passenger flights are still not possible, but I was assigned a flight to Shanghai for bringing some much needed personal protective equipment back home.
This flight operation is very special. We transport part of our cargo in the cabin and the crew is not allowed to deboard in China. Flying in, resting and flying back sums up to beeing 36 hours on the aircraft. To make all this legaly possible, we need special permissions from the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation and we fly with two flight crews.
The double crew offered me the possibility to do some airborne astrophotography from the passenger cabin, while my colleagues were flying the airplane.
Over northern China, I was shooting the Cygnus region of the Milky Way, while we passed some active thunderstorms and due to the atmospheric activity, the ride was not very smooth. To get at least a few sharp exposures, I had to push my camera to a higher ISO setting than normal.
For once, this was a good thing, as it enabled me to capture some red sprites. These reddish flashes are a very fleeting phenomena, lasting only a few tens of milliseconds and the high ISO setting helped to make them visible.
Sprites occur in clusters above the troposphere at an altitude range of 50–90 km (31–56 mi). They were first photographed 31 years ago in 1989.
Riding high above the sprites are some deep red astronomical nebulas: North America Nebula, Pelican Nebula and the Gamma Cygni Nebula, belong to the constellation Cygnus, while the Elephant Trunk Nebula and the red Garnet Star are located in Cepheus.
To complete this celestial tour, the Andromeda Galaxy is hugging the horizon to the lower left of the sprited.
Uploaded
May 20th, 2020
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Comments (1)
Allan Van Gasbeck
Congratulations! Your outstanding artwork has been chosen as a FEATURE in the “Long Exposure and Night Photography ” group on Fine Art America - You are invited to post your featured image to the featured image discussion thread as a permanent place to continue to get exposure even after the image is no longer on the Home Page.