Rotterdam (or Anywhere)

The northern lights have been extremely active, and I went out to watch them last Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, usually staying up until 4 in the morning. On Monday I needed a break, but when they forecasted an extreme aurora event last night, I knew I couldn’t stay home! I convinced Paul to come with me, luring him with promises of “the best aurora since 2003″… We left the house at 19:00, with very bright auroras dancing overhead. Even with all the city lights, I could watch them from the car, and it was so impressive. It took us a while to find a good place to take photos – and guess what, the northern lights were completely gone by then…

Eelke en Roy soon joined us, and we sat up a nice tea party on some deserted parking place in a valley not far from Tromsø. It was really dark there, and we impatiently waited for the lights to come back. And we waited… and waited… and waited… and we got very cold feet. We started taking silly photos to entertain ourselves…

After 2 hours of hopefully watching the vague green glow on the horizon, we decided to give up and go home. After about 10 minutes of driving, the sky was suddenly filled with auroras again 😀 We quickly stopped at a nearby beach and gazed in amazement at the aurora dancing and moving and twirling very brightly, all over the sky. So impressive!

There were a few clouds around, sometimes obscuring the northern lights, but I think they also add some depth to the images.

We spent about an hour on the beach. On the way back, the northern lights kept dancing around, and we had another quick photostop at Telegrafbukta for some final photos.

After so many nights with very little sleep, I’m happy the northern lights are taking a break. But even if they were disco-dancing in all the colours of the rainbow, I would stay at home tonight. Or would I? 🙂

This weekend was filled with northern lights! Yesterday they showed up as soon as it was dark enough, and continued almost all night. I braved the cold wind for a couple of hours, and made this time lapse video. It consists of 367 images taken over about 2.5 hours, each image an exposure of 20 seconds. Enjoy! 🙂

(For best viewing, choose HD and watch fullscreen!)

We spent Christmas in London this year, at Paul’s parents. It was wonderful, but my 6 days off flew by way too fast. Before I knew it, I was on my way back to Heathrow the day after Christmas. Back to work… but also back to beautiful Tromsø, and nights filled with northern lights 😀

It finally cleared up after days of cloudy, snowy weather, and the webcam showed beautiful northern lights. Just before midnight, I drove to the same place where I took the sunset photos in the last post. It’s very close to the airport (with all its lights) but you can walk far enough onto the beach to get away from the lights. I was standing in puddles trying to get photos of the reflections in the water 😀 My shoes are waterproof, but this is still a guaranteed method to get very cold feet!

I was very happy with the photos I got, and when the lights became weaker I decided to head home. When I was almost back at the car, I noticed this beautiful old hut near the beach. I just had to get a photo, even though the northern lights were very weak at that point. The lights from the road were lighting the foreground nicely, and while I was taking a few photos I suddenly noticed some very bright northern lights appearing. Soon the sky was full of them…

They were getting brighter, and I had to adjust the exposure times with every photo I took. At some point they were the brightest lights I have ever seen! I just sat down in the snow next to my tripod and looked up at the sky, and couldn’t believe my eyes. And my luck, since I would have driven home if I didn’t find that hut at the very last moment!

What a way to end 2011!! I still have to watch the fireworks tonight, but I know they won’t compare to this light show 🙂

And with this last post of the year, I would like to wish everybody a very happy 2012!!

And thank you for reading my blog, and for all the kind comments and emails 🙂