Sunset Auroras

Sunset Auroras

Yesterday I was pleased to see it was still light when I left work at 16:15 – the days are getting long 🙂 I went to buy food, and arrived home at about 17:00. Getting out of the car, I looked up at the sky and to my surprise, the aurora was out even though the sky was still very light! I quickly grabbed my camera and our brand new fisheye lens (Samyang 8mm f/3.5). It’s a tricky lens: manual focus and manual aperture setting. I drove to Telegrafbukta where I found a gale blowing the snow around. I didn’t dress very well so I was soon freezing, and the wind was so strong it made my (very sturdy) tripod move. Not the best conditions to try out this new lens, but I had no choice as Paul took my other wide-angle lens to Austria :D.

Anyway, despite all this, I am quite happy with the results. It’s fun to be able to capture the aurora right overhead. The fisheye lens gives extremely distorted images, I might try to play with some software that can correct this, but I haven’t had time yet.

Double (almost triple) arch of aurora stretching over the sky at sunset At some point the arch started rippling, very impressive!

Here you can clearly see how light the sky on the horizon still was Not even my fisheye lens was wide enough to capture the whole arch!

It was so impressive to see the aurora dancing overhead while it was still light. I didn’t last very long, after 30 minutes I was fed up with the wind and the cold, and I went home. Not long after, clouds rolled in and ended the show.

4 thoughts on “Sunset Auroras”

    1. Thank you! If you can, you should try to visit next winter. Solar activity should reach its maximum then 🙂

  2. Hi Hanneke,

    I just stumbled upon your aurora pictures by accident and recognized your name – we both attended the Les Houches summer school in 2008. 🙂

    I saw the same aurora that afternoon while cruising on Hurtigruten ship MS Lofoten near Honningsvåg. 🙂
    It started indeed around 4:30 pm, when it was still quite light.
    For me, it was the first time in my life to see northern lights – and luckily we had no clouds and the light show continued the whole evening.
    I would have been glad to use your fisheye lens as I could only capture a small part of the aurora.

    You can find my pictures here: http://www.wzforum.de/forum2/read.php?8,2383293,2383293#msg-2383293

    By the way – the pictures in your post from Jan 25th are some of the
    best aurora pictures I’ve ever seen!
    You are so lucky to live in such an amazing location like Tromsø!

    Greetings from Germany – ha det bra,
    Björn

  3. Hello Björn,

    Thanks a lot for your message – and what a coincidence! I had to look up the Les Houches group photo as your name didn’t immediately ring a bell, but yes I do remember you 🙂

    How lucky that you had clear skies all night for that aurora show, must have been amazing 🙂 you got some nice photos too, I know how hard it is to take photos from a moving/rolling ship. Last year, I took the MS Lofoten from Tromsø to Kirkenes (and back) and tried the same thing 😀

    You have a very nice website too, I especially love the winter photos from Deister – so beautiful!

    Tromsø is a fantastic place to live, the winter can be long and dark but as long as I get to see the aurora I don’t complain. And the summer is so much fun with the midnight sun.

    Tusen takk og ha det bra 🙂
    Hanneke

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