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Aurora - Tromso

Astrokev

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Astrokev

Astrokev

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We only had 3 nights in Tromso - a birthday trip for my wife, who's always wanted to see the aurora.

Friday 8th Feb - Soon after arriving at our hotel on the harbour in Tromso, we were amazed to see the lights on our first night! Unfortunately, having only just arrived, we didn't know our way around so, despite having hired a car, we didn't know where to go to get to some darker skies, so decided to enjoy the lights as best we could from the harbour wall just outside the hotel door. We weren't disappointed and although the glare from the buildings was brighter than I'd have liked, we still saw an impressive display. At one point the lights shot across the zenith right over the hotel!

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Saturday 9th - The website forecast I'd been following suggested this was going to be brighter than the Friday so we were getting excited as evening fell. Unfortunately the clouds rolled in. Despite driving to darker sites away from Tromso, the skies didn't clear beyond a few small breaks and we sadly didn't see any sign of the lights, which was disappointing.

Sunday 10th - much of the day the skies were cloudy so, after evening dinner, we retired to our room and watched for breaks in the cloud cover on the Tromso all-sky internet webcam. At around 7.30 a small break in the clouds started to appear and I saw a hint of green. The last few nights experience had told me that aurora seen with the naked eye was less bright than shown on the webcam. Nevertheless, as the sky continued to slowly clear, we decided to give it a go, rapidly climbing into our arctic gear and heading for the car. We drove to a small parking area on the other side of the island which we'd previously noted as offering dark views to the north despite it being very close to the airport.

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I took a few test images to see if I could see any sign of the aurora, and could just about make out a hint of green, although this wasn't visible to the naked eye. We waited. about 30 minutes later, the clouds miraculously blew over, revealing a clear starlit sky and a pale auroral band to the north. As we watched, and I strarted taking images, this suddenly brightened and a bright band grew up from the western horizon to cross the zenith down to the eastern horizon, rippling along the edges. Amazing. After that, the whole sky just erupted, and we didn't really know where to look. Vivid green bands of rippling light danced over the whole sky. Although it doesn't show on the images, rapidly flickering red and green needles of light began to appear along the edges of the bands. Absolutely stunning. I set my camera to take shots automatically until the best of the display was over about 20 minutes later.

We were both staggered - what a birthday!

All images - Nikon D300, Sigma 8mm f5.0, ISO1250, 10 second exposures. Straight from the camera without post-processing.

I'm currently trying to put together some short time-lapse video's from the DSLR images. If successful I'll post a few later.

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Astrokev

Astrokev

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Thanks to everyone for your kind replies. It certainly was a remarkable display.

And now with added video - if i can get it to load and run OK, here's a short video of the best part of the show, made from 50+ DSLR shots.

[Edit - oh well, that didn't work as well as I'd hoped. I was hoping it would show video without the need to click/download. Please be patient while it loads!]

Aurora 2.wmv

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