Aurora borealis

The only green in the sky we saw this year. A brief break in the clouds, but the next snowstorm is already coming in from the left. There's also quite a bit of light pollution from the harbour.

The light coloured "cloud" in the foreground is smoke from the ship's chimney as a gust of wind pushed it in our direction. There was a bit of swearing from photographers...;-)

All photos taken within one single minute!

Northern lights over the Barents Sea off Varanger peninsula. There was some swell so especially the PiP isn't quite as sharp as I would have wished.

A comparatively calm Barents Sea between Båtsfjord and Berlevåg. There was still enough swell that I had to keep the shutter speeds as short as possible and yet got plenty of photos with stars not as dots but as stripes and zigzags;-) This is one of the better efforts. Back from holiday but will take some time catching up.

Taken from Hurtigruten ship MS Vesterålen just off Berlevåg. In the circumstances -up to 8 Beaufort, we didn't manage to get into the harbour- this was the best I could come up with. One deck lower the camera got wet with sea spray.

A brief moment of really strong activity at 10 p.m. in the Barents sea just off Berlevåg

Banging doors and trampling feet woke me up at 1 a.m. so I decided to investigate, taking my camera and tripod with me. I was glad I did as the official aurora announcement only came after the best was over and we few hardy photographers were able to shoot for a while without having our photos totally ruined by camera flash and bright mobile displays. Um ein Uhr nachts weckten mich Türenschlagen und Stiefelgetrappel auf, also schmiß ich mich in warme Klamotten und nahm Kamera und Stativ mit. Ein Glück, denn bis die offizielle Nordlichtdurchsage kam, war das Beste schon vorbei und wir paar unentwegten Fotografen konnten zwischenzeitlich in Ruhe Fotos machen, ohne dass Blitzlicht und helle Handydisplays die Bilder ruiniert hätten.

Lopphavet, a notoriously stormy stretch of sea, was exceedingly calm that day. Northern lights started early in the evening, this was taken at 6 p.m. near the island of Silda. Please view on black!

My first ever timelapse, made from 196 photos using Picasa. It's a bit hectic because I kept changing my viewpoint too often but I hope it manages to give an impression. EXIF: Canon EOS 6D, Tokina 11-16: 16mm, f/2,8, ISO 5000, 1 sec-1.3 sec

A brief break in the clouds afforded a view of the aurora over Skjervøy. When MS Polarlys left harbour it started snowing again... The star constellations explained by Ko: www.ipernity.com/doc/1072793/40610094

This was what I had been looking for in my previous photo, 2 hours later the break in the clouds was there:-) Danach hatte ich schon auf dem vorherigen Foto Ausschau gehalten, 2 Stunden später war's so weit:-)

7.52 p.m.- a night of Aurora watching started promising with a low arc and some more green behind the clouds. The idea was to have the northern lights reflected in the water and ice - it was not to be.

3.26 a.m. on Kvaløya, on our way back to the hotel

Shot with Samyang 14mm f/2.8

The purple flash was so sudden and so extremely bright that it caught me unawares. I had no time to stop down or reduce the ISO and got quite a bit of lens flare. Shot with Samyang 14mm at F2.8. Colours of northern lights: Red- oxygen atoms at ca. 200km altitude, visible only at times of high solar activity Green- oxygen atoms at ca. 100 km altitude colliding with molecular nitrogen, the most common colour Blue/ purple - molecular nitrogen at lower altitudes, visible only at highest levels of solar activity and much faster than red and green en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora Das lilafarbene Nordlicht schoß so plötzlich und extrem hell über den Himmel, dass ich keine Zeit mehr hatte, ISO oder Blende anzupassen (deshalb die Blendenreflexe). Mit Samyang 14mm und F2,8 aufgenommen. Farben der Nordlichter: Rot entsteht in ca. 200km Höhe durch Sauerstoffatome und ist nur bei hoher Sonnenaktivität sichtbar Grün entsteht in ca.10km Höhe durch mit anderen Teilchen kollodierte Sauerstoffatome und kommt am häufigsten vor Blau/ lila entsteht durch angeregte Stickstoffatome, dafür sind jedoch extrem starke magnetosphärische Störungen erforderlich. de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarlicht

10.59 p.m. - first tentative aurora to the east. The lights of Tromsø illuminate the sky on the left, the birches cast shadows in the moonlight.