A surprising view of Sentinel-3A darting through the green flicker of the aurora borealis on its way into orbit has been captured on video from a hilltop in northern Finland.
The Sentinel-3A satellite lifted off from Plesetsk in Russia at 17:57 GMT (18:57 CET) on 16 February, about 1000 km away.
The footage appears to show the Rockot launcher as a very bright light scooting across the sky followed by a fainter spot, which could be either the jettisoned first or second stage of the rocket.
Clear skies and a good chance of seeing the aurora borealis, the ‘northern lights', were forecast that night, so Antero Isola, a keen photographer of the aurora borealis , took his cameras to the Saujapahta hilltop near Karigasniemi and pointed the lens towards the north.