Mission Accomplished. We had wanted to see the coastline and fjords, learn more about the Vikings, and experience the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis. Not a particularly flattering picture, relying on an iPhone to illuminate Amanda’s face, without which her head looked like a flaming red ball.
The Northern Lights occur directly overhead and form great bands and arcs and ribbons and curtains across the entire sky when you are in the region where they occur in the ionosphere. That region is like an enormous narrow floppy donut plopped on top of the world. You are outside of the region if you are too far south or too far north. It’s like two gigantic rings of fire, one in each polar region, north and south, because the auroras are the solar wind captured and directed by the earth’s magnetic field and exciting the oxygen and nitrogen in the ionosphere at the altitudes in which satellites circle the world.
While the Northern Lights can be seen at lower latitudes, they are seen on the horizon, not spanning the entire sky. Whenever you see the Northern Lights with the naked eye they, to our surprise, don’t look like this. The shapes and diaphanous appearance are true to nature, but the color is not. The strong green color is an artifact of photography and videography because cameras are more sensitive to the slight greenish cast that is inherent in the Aurora. When you see the Aurora the color is indistinguishable from the color of clouds or of light pollution. You determine that it is, in fact, an Aurora by photographing it. If it is light pollution it will look orangish, if it’s a display of Aurora it will be green.
The purple color is also an indication of strong solar wind activity, for the key to a wonderful display is a lot of solar wind and a clear night. We were fortunate. It was a bit of a challenge to capture reasonable photographs of the Northern Lights aboard a ship. The star squiggles are evidence of both the movement of the ship and the strong winds buffeting us on deck in the open at the stern, behind the funnel. Had the weather cooperated before we exited the magic donut, we would have as a last attempt (for you photographers) dramatically increased the ISO in order to shorten the exposure time.