Some might be wondering where I’ve been all this while. Well, I was on a quest to view the Northern Lights (aurora borealis) over a fortnight ago in northern Scandinavia.
Altogether I spent 9 nights in Norway and Sweden north of the Arctic Circle in the zone where the northern lights are usually seen. I saw the aurora on 2 of those nights, and both were very good displays. Of the other 7 nights, 5 were very cloudy, 1 night was very clear for a few hours with no aurora seen, and 1 night was partially clear for a few hours with no aurora seen.
Further below are some photos which I took on the 2 nights on which I saw the aurora, Mon 24 October 2011 and Wed 26 October 2011, which were my 3rd and 5th nights there.
I would add that after seeing the aurora on the 3rd and 5th nights, I did not spend much effort trying to view the aurora again, given the general cloudy conditions, so perhaps some of it was visible at that time. In contrast, on my 1st and 2nd nights there, I woke up every 2 hours at night after dinner till dawn (around 7am) to check for clear skies and the aurora. Season-wise, it was late autumn.
Although I’ve read that it tends to be cloudy in Tromsø in October, I had decided to go there anyway due to time constraints. Tromsø is one of the places which is right in the auroral zone; other places include northern Sweden and northern Finland, Iceland, Alaska, and northern Canada. I had never seen or attempted to view the aurora before. I figured that with 9 nights in the auroral viewing zone, I should be able to see it on at least one or two nights.
The Sun was also becoming very active this year, on the upswing in the 11-year solar cycle. However, when I was there, I heard of others who were there at around the same time and went back home not having seen the aurora at all. I also went there for sightseeing generally and hopefully spot some wildlife as well. I spent around 6 weeks intensively planning and preparing for the trip.
Arrival in Tromsø and early attempts
I arrived in Tromsø (pronounced “troom-sa”), which is a city of around 60,000+ in the north coast of Norway, on Sat 22 Oct from Singapore, via Helsinki/Oslo (Finnair) and Oslo (SAS). It is situated at 69°40’ N, about 350km north of the Arctic Circle. Tromsø is perhaps the northern-most city in the world (depending on how “city” is defined). Most of Tromsø city is situated on the island of Tromsøya, which is just 10km long N-S and 2.5km wide E-W (i.e. slightly larger than Pulau Ubin).
When I arrived, the skies were very clear and I was hopeful of seeing the aurora that night. I stayed 3 nights at a 3* hotel at the southern end of the island, by the sea (Hotel Sydspissen). I chose that hotel as it was about the furthest hotel from the city centre on the island. Indeed, on the first night there, I could see the far northern sky very clearly. Polaris was about 70 degrees above the horizon, and just 20 degrees offset from the zenith, wow! It was a real treat for an equatorial observer like me to be able to see the Little Dipper (Ursa Minor) perched high above the Big Dipper (in Ursa Major), with Polaris forming the full-stop to the whole formation. I saw the Big Dipper spend the night slowing circling around the north celestial pole in an anti-clockwise direction; indeed, the concept of circumpolar objects is totally alien for us equatorial observers.
The northern Milky Way was also visible, esp from Aquila, Cygnus and Cassiopeia (brightest), Perseus, then onto Auriga. Cassiopeia was right overhead, in the “wrong” place! However, the Milky Way in the north is not as bright as it is in southern and equatorial skies, esp the central bulge area in Sagittarius.
To add to the story, on the 3rd night, I saw Orion slowly emerge from the east, but standing almost upright, i.e. in the “wrong” orientation. Now it really looked like a hunter. As that night progressed, it did the strangest thing, for instead of heading straight up from the eastern horizon (and lying down) as it does here in Singapore/Johor, it moved mostly sideways along the horizon towards the south, very slowly gaining in altitude. Nevertheless, it was most reassuring to see familiar Orion in the sky, knowing that I was still in the same galaxy. (You can see Orion in some of the aurora photos below.)
On that first night, the skies were clear from 7pm till around 11pm. However, I did not see a trace of the aurora, and it was freezing, at around -2°C. The hotel receptionist told me that he had seen the aurora the previous night. Oh, why didn’t I arrange to arrive 1 day earlier?!
Due to weight constraints (lots of winter wear packed), I brought from Singapore a limited amount of optical and photography equipment:
- Binoculars: Nikon 10x42mm Monarch, Canon 15x50mm IS.
- Camera and lens: Canon EOS 60D, Sigma 17-70mm, Canon 10-22mm. Plus one cable release cord, and a Timer Cable Release (intervalometer) to take time-lapse photos.
- Tripod: Weifeng (light-weight China brand, with ball-head).
- Other stuff: down-stuffed jacket rated to -5°C, woolen inner vests, woolen pullover, woolen head scarf, ear mufflers, woolen socks, hand-warmers, hot-water bottle, thermos flask for coffee, red/white lights, ground sheet and Norton’s Bright Star Atlas 2000. Plus a mini-laptop.
(Note: I had to remove the filter (e.g. UV filter) from the camera lens during the aurora photography as I had read in a number of places that filters should be removed, as otherwise concentric circles may appear in the photographs of the aurora.)
1st observation: Monday 24 October 2011
On my 3rd day in Tromsø, the weather and aurora outlook were very poor. Not only was it very cloudy, but it drizzled for much of the afternoon. The forecast on the Norwegian meteorological dept’s website was for heavy cloud cover and drizzle throughout the night. Weather satellite photos showed a continuous band of clouds feeding in from the southwest in a circular loop all the way from Britain and beyond. What chance was there of clear skies for the next few days?
The aurora activity levels had also remained very low for the past few days, with a forecast on the website of the Univ of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute (http://www.gi.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast) of “Minimum” or “Quiet”, which was below the average of “Low”. So I was getting quite disappointed, and wondered if I would see the aurora at all on this trip. I did however read an obscure reference on the net that day to a coronal mass ejection from the Sun taking place (as I recall) the previous day, with a possibility of particles hitting the Earth anytime soon. Hmmm… but clouds were aplenty.
I needed the 4th and 5th factors for auroral observation to occur simultaneously, namely, solar/auroral activity and clear skies. The two seemed to be missing each other. I had already achieved the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd factors, i.e. being in the auroral viewing zone, being there when there were dark night-time skies (i.e. mid-Autumn onwards, Winter, till mid-Spring), and being in a fairly dark-sky location. Plus I was there around New Moon too. Oh dear, for all my effort….
I toured the very scenic alpine region (including viewing the Lyngen Alps at Oldervik and Svensby on the banks of the Ulls-fjord) throughout the day by bus and ferry, and I was therefore very tired in the evening. I slept at 7pm without even having dinner, and set my alarm clock for 11pm and 1am, just in case. Thereafter, I got up at 11pm and peeked outside the room window. Hey, I see a few stars now! I then went outside with my dSLR and saw a whitish horizontal glow just above the southeastern horizon which wasn’t there before. Now that is really suspicious, I thought. I quickly took a 20s exposure and the review showed that the glow was green!!! Oh my, we’re in business! I ran back to my room to get more stuff, and quickly checked the auroral forecast on the net. This time, it showed that the 1-hour forecast activity level had turned from “Quite” to “Extreme”! Something’s really happening out there, run!! (It was later reported on spaceweather.com on 25 Oct that a coronal mass ejection from the Sun had hit the Earth at 1800UT on 24th Oct, 8pm in Norway, and sparked “an intense geomagnetic storm”).
I eventually spent the next 7 hours photographing the aurora almost non-stop, from 11.30pm to 6.30am, like a crazy driven mule, with just one 20-minute break when I went back to the hotel room. The only other times of rest which I had were mainly during the times when I had set the intervalometer to take multiple exposures (of around 20s each) in sequence, to hopefully make a time-lapse movie showing the movement of the aurora. It was mostly a case of checking and re-checking all the camera and lens settings over and over again (especially focus and ensuring the lens was clear), and reviewing the results. All this, whilst it was mildly cold, at around 5°C. And add to it the fact that the aurora appeared and disappeared in different parts of the sky every now and then, requiring me to point and orientate the camera properly each time.
Photography aside, I wish to give a general description of what the aurora was like visually. As stated earlier, I first saw the aurora as a faint whitish horizontal glow above some hill tops in the southeastern horizon, which could easily have been mistaken for light pollution from a nearby town, or perhaps fog. This seemed to disappear after about 10 minutes, only to reappear again after a while, and it then slowly widened. I then saw a very distinct vertical band of light appear above this glow, quite a bit brighter than the glow itself. I was really ecstatic then, for I had seen the aurora at last, after travelling thousands of miles!!
Soon, more vertical bands formed above the glow, and the show was now on! The general colour of the aurora that night, visually-speaking, was light greyish-white, with a distinct tinge of green to it. However, I started to see in the photographs a lot of red, and I knew that it was not common. Then as the night went on, the photographs also showed orange, magenta, blue and violet, which would make it quite a rare occurrence. I later read on the web that that night (24th Oct 2011) had one of the best auroral displays in years, with the aurora seen in the southern United States. The kp index reached around 6 to 7 (on a scale of 0-9).
Although the photographs showed many colours, the predominant colour which I saw that night was greyish light green. I also saw some distinct dim reddening in some parts of the sky (e.g. around Betelguese), but it was not very obvious and had to be observed carefully to be seen. I don’t think I saw the other colours captured in the photographs at all, such as violet, magenta and blue.
Brightness-wise, the aurora was mostly around 5 times brighter than the bright regions of the Milky Way, and one would have no problems seeing it from a rural location. Strangely however, although the aurora activity index reached a very high 6 to 7 that night (during a geomagnetic storm), the aurora then was much dimmer than on the 2nd time I saw it on Wed 26 Oct, when the index was a low 1 to 2 only (more about that other night’s observation later). As an aside, I later learnt from two others that whilst I was asleep, there was a brighter but less colourful show of the aurora at around 9pm that night (Mon 24 Oct).
Throughout that 1st night’s observation, the aurora would appear in different parts of the sky (but mainly in the south), and then disappear and reappear elsewhere after a few minutes. A lot of the time, I only saw 1 or 2 solitary and short vertical bands of light appear here and there. At one stage, however, the aurora grew stronger and stronger until it filled nearly the whole sky in vertical bands of light for several minutes; it then brightened all of a sudden and lit up the sky as well as the ground, and I felt swamped by it; the ground was about 2-5 times as bright as on the night of a full Moon. I was in aurora-induced ecstasy! This was the real thing, and was good tonic for the disappointment and apprehension of the first two days there.
I then saw small movements in the bands of light: it was however not like a whole curtain of light moving about a whole region of sky as one might imagine, but rather a minor shift in one or two of the bands of light of about 10 degrees for a few seconds. I saw this movement a few times that night.
On another occasion, I sensed the aurora emanating from way overhead. I then laid down on the ground and looked upwards. I saw bands of light streaking downwards in all directions from the zenith for about a good 10 minutes, and this constantly shifted about. I felt completely submerged in the light, though it was not very bright.
At around 6.30am, dawn was breaking and I packed up after 7 hours of nearly non-stop observation and photography. Throughout most of the night, there were only drifting patches of clouds, with most of the sky therefore clear. So much so for weather forecasts. But what about that continuous band of cloud continuously feeding in from the southwest? After all, that was the pattern seen in satellite photos for the past several days. A check with satellite photos now showed that the whole band had actually shifted northwards earlier that evening.
Below are some photos from the first night; all of these are straight out of the camera and only re-sized down. I must caution once again, so as not to give the wrong impression, that I did not see much colour in the aurora other than light green and some dim red. I have also included one comparison photo where I have reduced the amount of colour and the brightness to more closely approximate what was seen visually.
Primarily green aurora, with self-portrait. The Big Dipper is at top right of the image.
Canon 10-20mm lens at 10mm, f/3.5, 5s, iso 800
Green and bright red aurora. Canon 10-20mm lens at 10mm, f/3.5, 20s, iso 1600
Aurora from zenith to near the horizon. Violet-blue, red and green.
Canon 10-20mm lens at 10mm, f/3.5, 9s, iso 1600
Aurora with self-portrait. Orion the Hunter can be seen in the background at centre near the horizon, standing nearly upright.
Canon 10-20mm lens at 10mm, f/3.5, 20s, iso 1600
Wide angle lens pointed straight up at the aurora radiating downwards.
Canon 10-20mm lens at 10mm, f/3.5, 5s iso 1600
Violet, red and green aurora, with Orion, Hyades, Pleiades and Jupiter.
Sigma 17-70mm lens at 17mm, f/2.8, 20s, iso 1600
Multi-coloured aurora! (A large bank of clouds is at upper right)
Canon 10-20mm lens at 10mm, f/3.5, 19s, iso 1600
The same picture as above but with the colour and brightness reduced to better approximate what I saw.
The dramatic change in cloud cover conditions on the 1st night in just a few hours…
2nd observation: Wed 26 October 2011
I had left Tromsø by ship (Hurtigruten line) on Tues to head north to Hammerfest, which is just above 70 degrees north, and which pronounces itself as the “northernmost town in the world”. After arriving in the early morning on Wed, and walking around town and inspecting the barren permafrost landscape, I boarded a southbound Hurtigruten ship a few hours later.
I then saw the aurora again on Wed 26 Oct from around 8.30pm to midnight, when the ship was near the port town of Skjervøy and heading back towards Tromsø. The temperature then was quite mild, around 8 degrees Celsius. All the photos below were taken from the top deck of the moving ship, so I think it’s quite remarkable that I managed to take some fairly sharp ones.
This time, the aurora display was very different from the first night (Mon). In all of the photographs, only a bit of red was captured (and just for a few minutes), and the only colour most of the time was green.
However, the aurora was much brighter this time, visually as well as in the photos. For about two hours, there was a band of green light (about 5 to 10 degrees wide) which stretched from near the horizon in the north all the way overhead and then down to the horizon in the south. There was also another band of green light parallel to it but it was much fainter. The main band of light brightened and dimmed every now and then, even almost disappearing at times only to brighten again. At around 10pm-11.30pm, the aurora display was at its strongest (the ship pulled into port at around mid-night, after which I did not continue observing). In the north, the band widened into curtains of light. I then observed the bright parts of the auroral light through binoculars, trying to ascertain if I could see any sort of detail or texture; I can report that it appeared to be a bright translucent haze or fog only, with no details seen.
How bright was it this time? Well, have a look at the photos: its brightest episodes (for perhaps a total 30 mins) were almost as bright as what you see. Perhaps a good comparison when it was at its brightest would be the apparent surface brightness of say, Mars or Saturn (not near Opposition) seen with the naked eyes, i.e. bright and obvious but not glaring like the full Moon, Jupiter or Venus. So, 20 times brighter than the central Milky Way, or 50? The green was also much stronger than on the 1st night, just as it appears in the photos. I would add however, that the aurora would also gradually dim at times till it was not obviously seen, but then brighten up again after around 10 mins.
Overall, the aurora was much brighter on the 2nd night than on the 1st night, apart from the few minutes on the 1st night when it had lit up the sky in curtains of light. This was strange, since the kp index was only around 1 to 2 on the 2nd night, whereas it was much much higher at around 6 to 7 on the 1st night. I met a British couple on the ship who also saw the aurora on the first night, and they made the same conclusion. So the 2nd night’s photos are a good representation of what I saw, whereas the 1st nights photos for the most part aren’t.
On the 2nd night (aboard the ship), I also saw the aurora move several times, both in the north and overhead. That created a lot of excitement on the ship’s deck, where about two dozen passengers were watching the show. One particularly excitable passenger, another Brit I think, would shout out aloud, “Oh my gosh, it’s moving now!!”, “Oh, it’s moving, it’s moving!!”, “Oh my, oh my!!”, and so on. Well, I decided to join in too, e.g. “Look overhead now, it moving so fast!!”, “Look over there, the aurora’s moving!!”. This movement was more pronounced than on the 1st night, but again, I would not want the reader to imagine that it was as if the light was dancing around the sky, for it was not. The movement was subtle, perhaps a slight shift in the light band of about 5 to 15 degrees only over a few seconds. The fastest rate I saw was perhaps a shift of the band of light overhead of around 10 degrees in under 2 seconds.
Again, as on the 1st night, the aurora would strengthen and weaken periodically, and again, at its strongest moments, I felt swamped by the light, even a little frightened. So I wonder what the ancients would have felt when they experienced it, not knowing what caused it.
As the ship was nearing Tromsø, the aurora appeared as broad horizontal bands of green light above the western horizon. As with other times on those two nights, I took several timed-exposures of the aurora in sequence using the intervalometer device. I hope to string these sequences into a few short movies soon, and will post a link to them on this forum when ready.
Bright green aurora from the north, reflected on the sea.
Canon 10-20mm lens at 11mm, f/3.5, 5s iso 1600
Band of aurora right above the ship. This is perhaps the best representation of how the aurora looked when at its brightest that night, in terms of brightness and colour. However, when this particular photo was taken, it was not at its brightest.
Canon 10-20mm lens at 11mm, f/3.5, 15s, iso 1600
The band of aurora stretched from the northern horizon, over the ship, and down to the southern horizon.
Canon 10-20mm lens at 11mm, f/3.5, 10s, iso 6400
Broad bands of aurora in the western sky.
Canon 10-20mm lens at 10mm, f/3.5, 10s, iso 800
Another photograph of the aurora above the ship. I think at this time it was moving.
Canon 10-20mm lens at 12mm, f/3.5, 5s, iso 6400
Another photograph of the aurora in the north, reflected on the sea.
Canon 10-20mm lens at 12mm, f/3.5, 15s, iso 3200
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Auroral activity – showing the kp index during the 2 nights I saw the aurora.
~~~~ End of report. Hope you like it! ~~~~~~
![[smilie=admire.gif]](./images/smilies/admire.gif "admire")
Wow, very nice, great pictures and report, thank you for sharing. You have fulfill one of your dream. 
