Clear nights, but wind that bites – for the Northern Lights.

Finally, another dream of mine has come true. I got to see… THIS! ->

This That, of course, being Aurora Borealis, aka the Northern Lights. Actually, I shouldn’t have written “of course” just there, because photos like these could have been taken in the southern hemisphere. Indeed, there are auroras down there too, but they’re referred to as Aurora Australis; and as Michael Caine once famously uttered – “Not a lot of people know that”! Record duly set straight, onward with this post )…

I’d dreamed of seeing this phenomenal natural… phenomenon since childhood. And I’d even made two attempts at getting there – but to no avail. On this third attempt however we were better prepared – we knew exactly where we were going and precisely when we needed to be there so as to be guaranteed the unabridged natural lightshow. We were fully prepared in terms of photography too: camera + plenty of lenses + plenty of batteries all packed and ready to go. There was just one thing we didn’t prepare for as we weren’t expecting it: WIND!

It seemed everything was just right: clear night skies without a cloud in sight, and here comes the fluorescence!… But taking photos of the celestial proceedings – hardly a chance! For the wind was blowing at 20 meters per second. These pics here are the few I managed to somehow take in-between gusts of wind when I managed to stand up straight.

Wait… 20m/s – just how fast is that? Let me translate it into something you’re more accustomed to…

It works out at 70km/h. But, that’s hardly hypersonic now is it? We’ve all been in a car going 70km/h on the highway; but have we all traveled that fast not inside a car – like on a motorbike – and when it’s bitterly cold out? Probably not. But if you have, you sure won’t have been sat up straight; you’d have been crouching forward, bracing against the wind so you don’t get blown off the motorbike. And that’s when you’re sat down – securely grabbing the motorbike’s handlebars. Going all circus-act and standing up on the seat? Yeah right ). So, I think/hope you get the idea: 20m/s wind is where you can hardly stand up. Still not picturing/capturing it? How about: if you turn an open bottle of water upside-down, the water doesn’t pour vertically down to the ground; it shoots out to the side horizontally to the ground! //This example needs to be recalled in case, when out in 20 m/s wind, you might need to… no, let’s not go there ).

So, like I say – we had difficulty snapping the light show in the sky. We just kept getting blown over!

What the missus and I had planned was that I’d carefully place my beloved photo-video kit pointing toward one side of the sky, while my no-less beloved wife would carefully place hers facing the other. Then we’d have twice as much photo-and-video footage of the impossibly magnificent celestial ballet of magnetic anomalies to pore over later!…

Like I say, that was the plan. Alas, the plan didn’t work out…

We were there for two days and three nights. One night it was cloudy and we couldn’t see a thing. On the other two nights the sky was completely clear. But there was this darn wind. Focusing on something, fiddling with the settings on the cameras – impossible. We only left our lodgings for a few minutes at a time, found a shelter of some kind, snap snap snap, and back inside. Still, we did manage to take at least a few reasonable photos – some even featuring stars peeping through…

Btw – we were staying at a glamping site – Kitovy Bereg (Whales’ Shore), here ->

To be honest, when it was blowing a hurricane we thought the pod we were in might get blown over. The wind made them sway and creak and flap, which was somewhat frightening. But in the end all ended well…

And that’s all for today folks! See you next time…

PS: I took a dip in the freezing Barents Sea. Alas – no photos ).

PPS: Turns out the various members of the party we were with viewed the night skies differently. We saw pretty much what you can see in the above pics. Some of the others didn’t see the green flourescence – just white cloud. When they later saw my snaps they were fairly amazed. Still others saw same white cloud but with just a few green highlights. Which, curiously – fascinatingly – goes to show that what folks see – or don’t see – of the Northern Lights is highly individualized. Could/should I extrapolate to a more generalized “we see what we want to see”? Hmmm. Nah. It’s Friday, darn it!…

The rest of the not-too-clear pics of the Northern Lights are here.