Nordlys - aurora at Force 5

This was another incredible day in Arctic Norway. We stumbled across the most massive gun emplacement from the Nazi Atlantic Wall guarding the approaches to Tromso (at Brensholmen). So well preserved and with no graffiti, rolls of rusty barbed wire, wood still in place and and all constructed by Russian POWs. (And no signage, as if better to forget all that German occupation nonsense). 

Beauty wherever you cared to look, crystal clear fjords, eider ducks, sea eagles, mergansers. And then when the day seemed played out and I'd run around the harbour taking photos of massive boats, the biggest of which was a UK Fishing Co ship and was huge huge. 

Then after a hurried tea we clambered back into the Hyundai and drove in the dying embers of the day to a spot I'd discovered last trip when everything was snow covered. We sat and sat watching the light fall, and fade, and fade.  Never have I wanted it to fade so fast. But on and on it went. Then first stars. Flights coming into Tromso airport. Some faint arcs in the sky and then later these milky lines started to appear, like cigar smoke, stretched out across the sky, moving in slow motion. The guy at the hotel reception said it had been a good aurora night when we returned - he never tires even though he's from the place - and that capturing that smoky grey/white is the hardest of all (mine were all green hey ho).

We were on and the nordlys were getting cracking. I shot loads of photos on a sec  to two second timing. We got cold. Different lights showed and we thought it was over after thee hours of waiting and maybe an hour of intermittent action. As we drove off the most amazingly intense show started - the Boss was insisting it was a solar storm and maybe it was. We stopped again. Just in front of a group of Russians who had also just stopped in the road. 

The photo was just before the peak when curtains of green and faintly red, madder lights flickered and shifted like a wind-blown net  across the act of the east-west sky. (That's the tail of The Plough/Big Dipper).

I shot to keep the house lights of the distant fjord shore at the bottom of the frame for reference. This was the most dramatic shot. All hand held. Even with a tripod the movement of the aurora is faster than the shutter speeds required. 

We tarried awhile, hoping for more, and then drove back along the E8 to Tromso - looking out for moose and taking care in that dipped headlight phase. Tomorrow night is predicted to be better but you never know. We were so lucky with the clear sky, my spot (Sandvika), the strength of the solar activity. So lucky. 

It's just after midnight. Feet have been wet all day but only just noticed. If you ever can fly to Tromso and hire a car just do it. Sleep in the car. Buy ryvita. But make sure to pack some duty free. 

It was a big day - 486 shots later. We stumbled across Iron Age funeral cairns, rock inscribed reindeer, the memorial to the pocket battleship Tirpitz, the construction of a huge cow barn at a 75% agri support level (on average) , a sort of eco-museum of turf roofed huts where silver birch bark was used as a kind of felting to protect roof timbers. On and on it went.