CHASING THE NORTHERN LIGHTS: Expedition Cruise for the Northern Lights to Dover
We will be chasing the Northern Lights on this trip with hopes of getting some good photos. The journey will take us to London, overnight there, then fly to Tromso, Norway, via Oslo. In Tromso we will be boarding the MS Maud, a Hurtigruten Expedition ship. From Tromso we sail north to the North Cape at N71’ Lat. Then we sail South to the wonderful port of Dover UK. Spending just a bit of time in Dover and London before heading home.
The northern lights are an atmospheric phenomenon that's regarded by some as the Holy Grail of night skywatching.
The northern lights, or the aurora borealis, are beautiful dancing waves of light that have captivated people for millennia. But for all its beauty, this spectacular light show in essence is a rather violent event.
Energized particles from our sun slam into Earth's upper atmosphere at speeds of up to 45 million mph, they enter our planet's magnetic field which protects us from this onslaught.
The Earth’s magnetic filed redirects the particles toward the poles — there are southern lights, too, this dramatic process transforms into a an amazing atmospheric phenomenon which is beautiful and amazing. Early Polar Expeditions recorded magnetic data.
Some history of the northern lights
Though it was Italian astronomer Galileo who coined the name "aurora borealis" in 1619 — after the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek god of the north wind, Boreas. The earliest record of the northern lights is in a cave painting in France.
People around the world have marveled at the Aurora, with myths about the dancing lights. One North American Inuit legend suggests that the northern lights are spirits playing ball with a walrus head, while the Vikings thought the phenomenon was light reflecting off the armor of the Valkyrie, the supernatural maidens who brought warriors into the afterlife.
Of special note to me is the legend of the Silver Harness. On the Winter Solstice our sledge dogs who have passed receive their Silver Harness - "It is when we all run together, each of us wearing a silver harness. We run when it is dark, faster and faster we go till we take off! We race into the sky, past the stars and the moon itself. The light from the stars shines and twinkles upon our silver harnesses sending flashes and streams of light all over the sky!"
Early astronomers also mentioned the northern lights in their records. A royal astronomer under Babylon's King Nebuchadnezzar II inscribed his report of the phenomenon on a tablet dated to 567 B.C., for example, while a Chinese report from 193 B.C. also notes the aurora.
The science behind the northern lights wasn't theorized until the turn of the 20th century. Norwegian scientist Kristian Birkeland proposed that electrons emitted from sunspots produced the atmospheric lights after being guided toward the poles by the earth’s magnetic field. The theory would eventually prove correct, but not until long after Birkeland's 1917 death. Remember the early Antarctic and Arctic expeditions recorded magnetic data.
Kp is an index to represent the planetary geomagnetic activity. The name originates from “planetarische Kennziffer” (German for planetary index). It has 10 main levels, numbered from 0 (no geomagnetic activity) to 9 (extreme geomagnetic activity). We have experienced the Aurora with a KP of 2-3 in Iceland.
General Camera Settings for Photographing
Northern Lights
Use a wide lens
Lens focus to infinity.
• Evaluative or matrix metering mode.
• Aperture at 2.8 or 4 - the lowest number as your lens can go.
• Exposure at 15 seconds for slower auroras and 10 seconds for faster ones. Adjust as needed.
• Set ISO at 1600 to start with and experiment.
Set custom white balance to Kelvin value around 3000
Let’s hope the Norse Gods give us clear skies.
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