A Starry Night of Iceland

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 Jkulsrln , 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. As the Sun progresses away from its current low in surface activity toward a solar maximum a few years away, many more spectacular images of aurora are expected.