Smoke On the Water

Quote from Ledvina: "Here's one of my favorite shots of the milky way from last year - lake mist rolling off Salo Lake with a July milky way blazing in the sky. This is one shot, believe it or not, and the mist in this shot is due to some unusually cold temperatures. In fact, where I was at was the coldest spot in the United States, coming in at 34 degrees. As I'm writing this caption it's a frigid -35F in Grand Forks, so honestly, I would happily take 34 degrees right now! Anyways, I like this shot just because of all the color you are able to pull out of the night sky, and the way the blue-white flashlight created a blue cast on the mist. One of the most common misconceptions about the night sky is that it's just black and white! Maybe to our eyes it appears that way, but when you point a camera at the stars, what you get is FAR from a black and white photo. In this image, the greens and purples are due to a phenomenon called airglow. Airglow is produced in a similar way to auroras -