Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis)

A crisp and clear night with freezing winds, and a very bright moon!
A moon this bright is very bad for watching stars as well as northern lights. Perhaps in the far north where the light is always very bright, the moonshine could add a wonderful dimension to the auroras, but here far to the south? Hmmm… As usual when the sky is clear I do take a walk outside to see with my own eyes, and I reluctantly did so this night as well.

How incredibly glad I am that I did! I caught myself saying “wow”, and lot’s of other exited words, and ran to get my camera gear as fast as I possibly could.

I noticed immediately that the light was very fast mowing, and as I ran I wondered if what I saw would be all that I got this night.

I set up the camera close to the ocean and got this bright display for a brief time, and then it went dull and seemingly it was all over.

This is about 30 minutes later.

Around 30 minutes later this is the brightest, and now I’m really worried about my camera, as the wind has shifted and big waves are hitting very close to the camera. I stop the shooting confident that this is all there is to it this night.

This time lapse has been slowed to 75% of full speed, as the auroras are sow fast! In fact this aurora display would be really nice in regular movie recordings.

Well indoors I downloaded my images, and peeked at the aurora oval, and saw to my surprise that it was still going very strong. I re-assembled my gear and quickly went outside to set it up in a safe location from the waves. To my astonishment I later see that I would have missed the greatest display hadn’t I checked the aurora oval!