Astounding Alta Auroras

Astounding Alta Auroras

Our northern lights display in Tromsø was just the appetizer for the main course in Alta on the evening of Friday, 13 October 2023! Multicolored pillars at 10:13 pm I wasn’t able to take an excursion out into the countryside this evening, so I scouted the container yard and airport perimeter near the ship to try to find a place with as few streetlights as possible. When I checked the forecast at 9:30 pm, I saw that an “interplanetary storm” was underway. Time to run out and get to work! I was in place by 10 pm. Curtain forming at 10:27 pm As soon as my eyes adapted to the dark, I saw auroras forming to the northeast. They quickly developed into a multi-colored curtain that shimmered and steadily grew in height and length. The pillars grow in height at 10:35 pm The curtain continued to dance, and the colors were more intense than any I’d seen before. https://youtu.be/Sh-54Ch2JG4 Animation of auroras between 10:34 and 10:36 pm 10:37 pm The...
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Glorious lights in Tromsø

Glorious lights in Tromsø

Guests from the Silversea Silver Dawn were treated to a stunning display of northern lights from a husky camp on Kvaløya (Whale Island), west of Tromsø, on the evening of October 12, 2023. As always seems to happen with aurora-watching excursions, the forecast for the evening was not promising: overcast with snow developing, and the Glendale app predicted no chance of auroras developing. I almost left my camera and tripod on the ship, but changed my mind at the last minute. After we greeted the friendly huskies at the camp, we went inside a hut to warm up and feast on some delicious bacalao, an amazing cod stew. Our local guides, Eike and Carlo, were enthusiastic and optimistic that we would see something in the sky that evening. They huddled around the campfire outside while we ate dinner. I excused myself after wolfing down my bowl of stew and went outside to check the sky. It was 8:45 pm. I hadn't been...
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Photographing the Northern Lights

Photographing the Northern Lights

Click here to check out my photos of a great Northern Lights display near Tromsø on October 12, 2023! Here's a quick summary of my suggestions and tips for taking photos of auroras on a cruise. What apps will tell me if auroras are visible? There are many out there, most pull info from the same sources. "Live Aurora Network" is not free, but it provides real-time sighting information and sky images from multiple locations, and it will send you alerts when there is auroral activity. SpaceWeatherLive and the Glendale App use more scientific data that some people might find difficult to interpret. What's the best way to take photos of auroras? The two most critical things are finding ways to steady your camera and to take manual control of settings if possible. You'll need to take exposures of several seconds in the dark, and the autofocus on cameras can easily get confused by auroras. It's helpful if you have a tripod or...
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Chasing the Northern Lights

Our February/March 2020 cruise on the Viking Star was a fantastic trip. In addition to meeting some great people and enjoying the stunning scenery, we also achieved our primary goal, which was to experience the Northern Lights. Of course, we returned to a world changed by the COVID-19 lockdown, but I didn't let that prevent me from sharing our experiences with the Greensboro Astronomy Club via Zoom on Friday, April 20. I recorded the presentation and am happy to provide the link to the video below. My talk opens with a brief discussion of the Northern Lights in history and our attempts to understand what causes them. The primary purpose, though, was to answer the question that I took with me to Norway: What does it really look like to be under the Northern Lights? Hopefully, this presentation will answer that question, as it includes more than 100 images that I captured with my iPhone in Night Mode over several night's worth...
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Bergen and Osterfjord: March 9-11

Bergen and Osterfjord: March 9-11

Our final port of call for this trip was Bergen, one of Norway’s oldest cities. On our first day in town, we took a tour which started in Bryggen, a trading post established by the Hanseatic League in 1350. The colorful storefronts of Bryggen The two storefronts at left, and the brown triangular roofs behind them, are actually the Radisson Blu hotel, where we stayed during our final two nights in Bergen. Bryggen’s primary export was dried cod. In its dried form, it could be preserved for years (decades) and reconstituted later on, retaining most of its nutritional value. I’ll take their word for it. Why don’t I have this sculpture of a royal cod in my front yard? One of the alleyways between the shops We visited the Hanseatic Museum and Schøtstuene, in which rooms and artifacts from the original buildings have been preserved. The “talking stick” in the central trading hall. A man could speak during a meeting only if he...
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Sidebar: Edvard Grieg’s Home, Troldhaugen

Sidebar: Edvard Grieg’s Home, Troldhaugen

We said goodbye to the Viking Star this morning and checked into our hotel in Bergen. We have two days on our own before we leave for home. Now it was time for us to venture out, independent of tour buses and groups. We hopped onto Bergen’s light rail train for the town of Hop (pronounced hoop) and a one-mile walk to the home of Norway’s greatest composer, Edvard Grieg. The back door at Troldhaugen Grieg and his wife Nina selected a site on Nordås Lake, south of Bergen, to build their home in 1885. Troldhaugen, meaning ‘valley of trolls,’ was the name Grieg chose based on local children’s legends about the countryside near the home site. The view from Grieg’s front yard Jane and I had the place practically to ourselves today. The museum office said that only five tourists had visited the museum the whole day. We had a private tour of the residence and had a wonderful opportunity to talk...
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Narvik and Polar Park, March 7

Narvik and Polar Park, March 7

The port of Narvik was our last stop north of the Arctic Circle. Although it’s a very small town, Narvik’s ice-free harbor at the terminus of a railway bringing iron ore from Sweden made it a key strategic objective of both Britain and the Germans at the outset of WWII. After a fierce naval battle that sent numerous ships to the bottom of the fjord, the British held Narvik for more than a month, surrendering it only when they had to send their resources south to evacuate their troops from France. Freighters lying in the fjord at Narvik The town was hosting an alpine ski event during our visit. The ski slopes are just off the center of town. Lights illuminate a ski run at dusk As if having a ski event in town wasn’t enough, NATO forces were conducting wintertime exercises in the area. We passed columns of troop carriers and also saw tanks in the field along the highway north of town....
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Alta – March 5/6, 2020

Alta – March 5/6, 2020

Our northernmost port of call for this voyage was Alta, a city of about 20,000 inhabitants. Alta was the German navy’s largest base of operations outside of Germany in WWII. The Germans burned the city to the ground when they retreated in 1944; only one church remained standing, and the population was forcibly relocated. Today, Alta is a center for salmon farming, Arctic research, and mining. Alta’s museum is built on the site of an amazing set of petroglyphs that date back more than 6,000 years. Ancient artists decorated the rocks by pecking at them with a pointed tool and adding red iron oxide to the excised area. The “Pippi” rock, named for its resemblance to Pippi Longstocking The museum also houses historical artifacts from the first scientific studies of the northern lights. In the city center is the unique Northern Lights Cathedral, built in 2013. It’s made of wood and concrete and clad in titanium sheets. Reindeer sledding In the afternoon of...
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Tromsø – March 3/4, 2020

Tromsø – March 3/4, 2020

We docked at Tromsø on Tuesday morning. The main part of the city sits on a small island, one that is relatively densely populated for this part of the world. The city and its environs have about 130,000 inhabitants and is the world’s third largest city north of the Arctic Circle. They call it “The Paris of the North” because it is relatively cosmopolitan. Foreigners make up 10% of the population, and it’s a major hub of Arctic scientific research. It was from here that Roald Amundsen and Fridtjof Nansen set off on their polar expeditions in the late 1800s and early 1900s. We learned about their voyages in a visit to the Polar Museum. It’s almost impossible to imagine the hardships suffered by these explorers and others who tried to make their living in the Arctic back in those days. Marking a quite different era in Tromsø’s cultural history is the Arctic Cathedral, which opened in 1965. It’s a soaring aluminum...
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Beautiful Bodø – March 2, 2020

Our first scheduled port call at Stavanger was two days ago, but it was canceled due to high winds. That meant an extra sea day, and a chance to relax and watch the Norwegian coast slip by as we sailed north. The Order of the Blue Nose Yesterday was a scheduled sea day. The highlight was a 3 pm ceremony for bestowing “The Order of the Blue Nose.” It’s one of those seafaring traditions stretching back at least 100 years - an initiation for sailors crossing the Arctic Circle for the first time. I had heard that on Viking’s cruises up the coast of Norway, passengers are invited to immerse themselves in a jacuzzi filled with ice water as part of the ritual. It’s voluntary, of course, and I debated with myself as to whether or not I would do it. Finally I decided that I would do it in honor of my dad, my former father-in-law Al Friedrich, and the other...
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