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Month: September 2010

Butterflies

Butterflies

Last Wednesday I visited the botanical garden of the University of Utrecht with my mum. I’ve never really liked the campus of this university, it’s full of very big modern buildings (I prefer the old universities 🙂 ) and right next to the highway, which makes it very noisy. Even in the botanical garden you can constantly hear the noise from the cars. Still, the garden is like an oasis and very calm. There was hardly anyone there. We walked around for a long time, I always enjoy taking photos of flowers…

Colourful flower Sunny orange flower

And my mum takes photos of me 😀

That's what I look like taking photos :D

We were very lucky, they had a special butterfly exhibition in one of the glasshouses. It was supposed to have finished the week before, but they extended it for another week – great! I took my macro lens with me, it was a paradise for macro photography 🙂 The glasshouse was quite small and FULL of butterflies, it was easy to get very close to them. They are so pretty!

A male Cairns Birdwing butterfly (from Australia) - so pretty! Butterfly & pretty flower
This one had to flap its wings very fast to be able to hover near the flower

There was a bowl of fruit which attracted a lot of butterflies, and they’d sit very still eating their grape or banana. I love their big “alien” eyes!

Butterfly eating a grape - love the alien eyes! The paper kite (or rice paper) butterfly

There were also several butterflies mating – the girl who worked in the garden kept pointing them out for me 😀 She was very friendly. Some butterflies have such amazing wings, they really are artworks of nature!

Mating butterflies Some of their wings are like artwork! This one is an owl butterfly

Here you can see their long tongues… good thing they can roll them up 😀

Their long tongues are fascinating Big alien eyes :)

It was a windy day, but warm enough to sit outside and enjoy a cup of tea at the cafe in the garden. We spent several hours in the botanical garden, a nice way to spent the afternoon!

Autumn Fairytale

Autumn Fairytale

My brother and his girlfriend came to Tromsø for a short visit. The weather was stunning, and on Thursday afternoon we walked to Nonsbu cabin to spend the night there. We started from Tønsvik, where I’ve been many times in winter and in summer, but never in autumn. It was so beautiful! All the trees in full autumn colour and all the blueberry bushes a bright red. It was quite warm in the sun, we walked in tshirts.

Walking up through the yellow forest Above the tree line, looking back at the stunning view!

It’s not a very strenuous walk, the highest point is about 380 m. There you find this beautiful lake with a cute little island in the middle…

Cute little island in the middle of the lake

From there it’s a short walk down to the cabin. We met many people on the way to the cabin, but everybody was out for just a day trip, and we had the cabin to ourselves. The thermometer next to the door showed 23 degrees in the sun!

Destination in sight: Nonsbu cabin 23 degrees in the sun!

We had dinner and when the sun had set, we built a camp fire. It took a long time to get really dark, but the evening light was beautiful!

Nonsbu in the evening light Hot chocolate by the camp fire

We stayed up hoping the northern lights would show up. To keep ourselves entertained we took photos while we “painted” with fire, good fun!

Painting with fire :) All three of us - I kept hitting a bush, oops

It’s nice to be in a place where it gets really dark. The stars were amazing, we could clearly see the milky way and several satellites passing, as well as a few falling stars. I took this 7 minute exposure of the stars and the cabin which was lit by the camp fire.

Star trails and the cabin lit up by the camp fire

It was now after 23:00 and we started to give up hope that the northern lights would come out. But then suddenly, a weak light at the horizon… getting stronger, moving and becoming an arc. So beautiful! I had been looking forward to the opportunity to take photos in a completely dark place, but found out it was actually harder to find something for the foreground as it was so dark. In the 30 seconds exposure, it looks like there’s still an orange glow from the sunset – we couldn’t see that with the naked eye however! My favourite photo is the one of my brother and his girlfriend standing by the camp fire watching the northern lights. Soon after I took this photo, the northern lights became very weak and we went to bed.

Beautiful northern lights! The orange light of the sunset (?) was not visible to the naked eye but came out in the long exposures Watching the northern lights by the warmth of the camp fire

The next day was just as sunny, and we walked the same route back to Tønsvik. On the way back to town, we took the cable car up to enjoy the view of Tromsø island from above.

Enjoying the view of Tromsø island

What a perfect little trip! Today it’s back to work for me, and they’ve left for a trip by car. They’re flying back to the Netherlands tomorrow. I will follow them a day later 😀 I’ll be in the Netherlands for a week to attend the wedding of a friend and to spend time with family and friends for a bit. It’s nice to spend some time back home, especially while Paul is at sea for the whole month.

Autumn Mist

Autumn Mist

This morning when I opened the blinds – still half asleep – I noticed fog over the fjord. The sun was shining, which made the fog look very bright white. So pretty! I grabbed my camera bag and an apple for breakfast, and went out to take photos. Early morning mist is quite common on clear days, especially in autumn, but it tends to disappear quickly when the sun is strong enough to burn it away. It was 11 when I got up (my daily rhythm still disturbed by yesterday’s night shift) so I knew it probably wouldn’t last much longer.

These photos are taken at Telegrafbukta, this is the jetty that I took the northern lights photos from two weeks ago.  The second photo is zoomed out so you can see the blue sky above the mist. I think the bright area would form a fog bow (rainbow without colours) if there had been enough fog.

Jetty at Telegrafbukta in the mist Above the mist the sky was blue. It looks like there's a vague partial fog bow visible (a colourless rainbow visible in fog)

I watched some ships looming out of the mist – an impressive sight. All around Telegrafbukta, there were groups of students (from a high school I think) doing some kind of project about marine life.  They also seemed to use the boat in the second photo, it came to the jetty a few times. How cool is that!

Ship appearing out of the mist I believe this ship was used by the high school students for their project - how cool is that!

The autumn colours are beautiful at the moment! When the sun comes out and the sky is blue, it just looks so pretty 🙂

Autumn colours at Telegrafbukta

The mist started to disappear, in the photo below you can see there are only a few patches remaining. There were several people walking around, taking photos. I talked to one guy who showed me his photos from earlier this morning…  he made me very jealous 😀 The mist had been denser then, and he took beautiful photos of the bridge and the city centre. I should get up earlier next time!

Here the mist has almost disappeared, just a few patches remaining Beautiful autumn colours!

I thought about going to one of the bridges, or up Fjellheisen, but the mist had completely disappeared by then. Instead I drove to Prestvannet, the lake on top of Tromsø island. On sunny days it’s not very difficult to take nice photos there 🙂 with Tromsdalstinden reflected in the lake and the colourful trees.

View of Tromsdalstinden from Prestvannet Feeding the ducks

What a beautiful morning! It was great to be out and take photos again. Can you believe I haven’t taken any photos since the northern light photos 2 weeks ago? It was a very busy time, I’ve been working a lot and Paul was getting ready for his annual research cruise. He’s the cruise leader this year which meant he had lots of organisational things to take care of. He flew to Longyearbyen to board the ship there, but he’ll come back to Tromsø by ship at the end of this month.

Tonight my brother and his girlfriend are arriving in Tromsø, it looks like they’re going to be extremely lucky with the weather – we’re supposed to have sunshine until Sunday. Perfect! I have two days off, so we’re planning to go hiking and stay in one of the mountain huts. I’m really looking forward 🙂 I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we’ll also see the northern lights 😀