The aurora from Tromsø
Posted: March 9, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 3 CommentsSo I ave a confession to make, this time last week I’d never seen the Northern Lights. Growing up near Edinburgh it’s a bit too far south and often cloudy when there are solar storms. Nijmegen and Heidelberg are a bit too far south and as for Hawai`i forget it. So a week ago, along with a few other astronomers (and an accountant) from Heidelberg, I set off for the Arctic Circle. This sounds a lot more intrepid than it actually was, booking a flight to Tromsø and hiring a car.
Anyway, enough about my jaunt, here’s some nice aurora pictures. I don’t have a fancy DSLR so I was using my Sony DSC-H2 which is apparently a “bridge camera”. Additionally the tripod is only a small pocket one so there is a small amount of camera-shake on some of the star images.
Shot over towards the next island in the Tromsø archipelago, the aurora appears to erupt from the mountain.
The glow of the aurora behind the trees
Venus and Jupiter setting next to a plume of aurora
Orion seen through clouds and aurora
And here’s a time-lapse of the aurora changing over about 5 minutes. Note the Pleiades star cluster setting in the background.
we are all in the gutter 
Nice to know that the fabled Tromsø aurora still works: during a Hurtigruten trip up the coast last November we had one of the best sightings right there (see http://skyweek.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/polarlicht-vom-schiff-vor-norwegen-so-gehts for some results, also with a bridge camera), and I’ll be doing the tour again next week …
[…] aus der letzten Nacht (vermutlich), dem 8. März aus Island, dem 7. März aus den USA (Michigan), Anfang März aus Norwegen, dem 1. März in Schweden und dem Februar vor Norwegen (Hurtigruten). Außerdem ein […]
The aurora photos look fantastic! Our planet is really one beautiful place to live in. It would be heard to discover these things in just a single lifetime. If only I could spend the rest of my life seeing these things in person instead of just relying on pictures, I would be the happiest person on Earth. I was just introduced into the hobby of stargazing and it makes me feel relaxed and stress-free. Reading blogs like this also helps relieve the stress.