Northern Lights

This has been an unusually good year for viewing the Northern Lights in the Northern United States. The sun has been especially active and even weather forecasts have provided viewers predictions concerning whether sightings will be possible. Seeing the Northern Lights in the north of Norway is not extraordinary and Havila, the cruise line we are on, pretty much guarantees you will have the opportunity. 

We prepared for this opportunity by learning a bit about how best to take photos of the lights on an iPhone. Tbe iPhone is very good at capturing images in low light conditions, but for the Northern Lights it is best to learn how to manually expand the time the "shutter" is open. Of course, when you go to a 5-10 second shutter you have an issue with steadiness so the pros use tripods. A tripod would only go so far on a ship that is moving both up and down and side to side, but I did learn how to set a longer exposure duration.

We had three opportunities to photograph the light show. One was sometime after midnight so I did not bother. The second of the remaining two opportunities was the best and I did get a couple of reasonable images. 

These were not the most impressive Northern Lights I have seen. My best experience was in North Dakota when I was driving back from doing a workshop late a night. No photos but an entire section of the sky lit up.

The science of the Northern Lights. Norway and the Northern Lights