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 outside for more than two minutes when Eike suddenly pointed behind me and exclaimed, “The lights!”
A glowing patch just under the Big Dipper quickly spread and differentiated into a curtain. Spikes brightened and faded in a matter of seconds. I hastily set up my camera and tripod and started snapping photos. (For the record, I was shooting with a Nikon D5500, 18mm lens set at f3.5 and manually focused, ISO 1600, and exposures ranging from 3 secs. to 16 secs.)
Eike ran into the cabin to alert everyone to the developing display. Soon there were 70 people pointing their phones in amazement at the sky.
Satellites seemed to be photobombing every image. But the same trick of geometry that made the satellites so bright also created a beautiful blue on the auroras. We see satellites best just after sunset and before sunrise, because they’re high enough to still be in sunlight while it’s dark on the ground. The light of the setting sun catching the tops of auroras will create a blue tint when you observe them around the time of the equinoxes.
We also caught some pinks and purples, which are created by more energetic excitation of nitrogen molecules lower in the ionosphere.
It was getting pretty crowded up near the fire and the hut. Lots of people stumbling around in the dark, staring up in the sky! I relocated myself downhill from the bus parking lot for a few minutes to get out of people’s way.
I turned to the east to see the curtain stretching all the way across the sky. There were more clouds and city lights in that direction. However, the Pleiades and Jupiter were welcome sights.
The display began to fade by 9:45, with just a few streaks in the sky by 10:00. The guests on the excursion were overwhelmed, tired, cold, and happy. As the celestial display drew to a close, people trundled back onto the buses to return to the ship.
On our way back to Tromsø, the bus suddenly came to a halt. There was a reindeer standing in the middle of the road! –And off to the side, a whole heard of them, several bulls and many females. Carlo remarked that we had to be the luckiest guests he’d ever had on a Northern Lights excursion.
I agree. It was a great night. I’m so thrilled that our groups were able to marvel at this indescribable phenomenon. I hope they all believed it was worth the trip to a far northern corner of the world, where magic happens.