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Northern Lights across the sky
with the moon behind promontory and clouds |
The earth seems to dream of the star in fireflies.
Once it'll shine and fliy freely through the starry night.
The sea does not blossom in foam: in edges of fire!
The Milky Way gently bubbles through the tongues of flame.
From: The Stairs to the Northern Lights
Theodor Däubler [1]
I already had visited the far north of Norway in October 1980; Narvik to be specific, but at that time the Northern Lights were not an issue and I made no attempt to see this natural spectacle, nor did I see it by chance. Last year I traveled to Iceland, but it was always cloudy and apart from a little light behind thin clouds there was nothing to see and certainly nothing to photograph. Then this year, when the Northern Lights reached very far south, I went to an open area near old quarry ponds in Cologne. It was a very adventurous undertaking, walking through the thorn bushes there at night, but at least I found an open area. If it hadn't been for the terrible light pollution in Cologne, I would have even been able to see the Northern Lights there [2]. Then later I tried again from the Eifel, because there is hardly any light pollution there, but apparently it wasn't reaching into this southerly region.
So I was very excited when I travelled to the north of Norway and was initially very disappointed because it was very overcast. When I arrived in Tromsø there was snow. The snow turned to rain and the rain turned to drizzle, but it remained cloudy. It was only during the last few days, on Semla, that it cleared up occasionally so that I could start to look into photographing the Northern Lights. I had done little if none homework. I am not at all interested in the special features of cameras and their technical details. I want to capture images, subjects and events as they were, so that I can either pass them on later or use them for further thoughts and ideas. I did have two cameras with me, however. I took an old camera (Lumix / Panasonic TZ71) with me, even though it has problems with the zoom, but I did not want to use the zoom at all and I had had good experiences photographing the comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, which was recently visible. I also reported on this here on the blog [3]. But this method is not suitable for the Northern Lights at all, because the Northern Lights move and if I have a very long exposure time, it simply doesn't work [4]. I then found out that I couldn't change the light sensitivity and exposure time at the same time on my other camera, the TZ96G. But that would have been necessary. Then I found out that I could do it with my cell phone. You can use the Pro setting, where you can simultaneously increase the sensitivity to 3200 ISO and extend the exposure time to a maximum of 10 seconds. I then had my first experiences with very weak Northern Lights.
Let's briefly talk about what the Northern Lights actually are and in which colors they appear in. The Northern Lights are created by the solar wind hitting the Earth's magnetic field. If this happens in the higher regions above the earths's surface, reddish colors are more likely to be seen, and the deeper you go, the greener the aurora becomes, and other colors are also added, and at very low levels, red appears again. One may see the auroras in high-latitude regions (around the Arctic and Antarctic). "Auroras display dynamic patterns of brilliant lights that appear as curtains, rays, spirals, or dynamic flickers covering the entire sky." [5] Let's stick to the aurora borealis (Northern Lights); the southern hemisphere has aurora australis. And the further south you go from the Arctic circle in the northern hemisphere, the more likely you are to see only the upper layers, i.e. the red aurora, and for this green light, which is so typically depicted in very beautiful photos, you have to travel to the far north. If you want to know more about it, you have to read the very detailed but well-written Wikipedia article. Or get a book about the northern lights. Or visit a northern lights museum, as I did in Iceland.
I saw the first northern lights on the island of Semla and there I was able to experiment with my cell phone. I had worked with an exposure time of 8 seconds at times. Then we encountered bad weather again, but finally we took the ferry from Moskenes to Bodø. And while we were still driving in fog and thick clouds, we very quickly came into clear weather or only a few clouds. You could see the northern lights very well from the ferry. The ferry ride lasted over three and a half hours, so there was enough time to take photos from the ship, sometimes with a very short exposure time. Of course I didn't have a tripod for my cell phone with me - but a tripod wouldn't have been useful on the rocking ship anyway. And one shot didn't turn out too bad, because you can see the light of an airplane flying past the northern lights and it's hardly blurred. I don't know how that happened, but it worked.
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The airplane is the horizontal line between Taurus (>) and the Plejades
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In Bodø we took the bus from the ferry to our nearby hotel and when we got off something wonderful happened. Northern lights came down from the sky in swirls, loops, bands, in very rapid succession. I took the photos using the ship's exposure time, when I should have just shot a video because of the brightness of these phenomena, but hindsight is always 20/20. Nevertheless, I found a very remote spot at the harbor entrance where I was able to put my phone on a table to reduce the blurring of the photos.
So these photos that I am showing here are anything but perfect, but they are an indication that it is worth seeing the northern lights and travel there.
Links and Annotations:
[1] Translated from the German text [1a]:
Die Erde scheint in Glühwürmchen vom Stern zu träumen.
Einst leuchtet, fliegt sie frei durch die gestirnte Nacht.
In Schäumen nicht erblüht das Meer: in Feuersäumen!
Die Milchstraße durchperlt die Flammensprachen sacht.
„Theodor Däubler [1b] (1876–1934) was a poet and cultural critic in the German language. He was born in Trieste, then part of Austro-Hungary and has been described as "Trieste's most important German-speaking writer".
[1a] Die Treppe zum Nordlicht http://www.gedichte.eu/ex/daeubler/die-treppe-zum-nordlicht/erweckt-mich-laerm-es.php
[1b] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_D%C3%A4ubler
[2] I've alread mentioned this adventure in a German text: Das Grußwort oder „The Turn of the Screw“ https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2024/05/das-gruwort-oder-turn-of-screw-1.html
[3] Der Komet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in der Eifel / With an English Translation: Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in the Eifel Mountains
https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2024/10/der-komet-c2023-a3-tsuchinshan-atlas-in.html
[4] For the picture of the comet the data for recording had been: Panasonic DMC-TZ71 4.3 mm f/3.3 30s ISO 80. You cannot chance the sensitivity for this function!
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora
PS: The pictures have been enhanced.
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