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17th Feb. 2012 :: The Amazing Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights)

This week I have had the immense pleasure to view the Northern Lights, way up inside the Arctic Circle in Tromsø, Norway; and what an absolutely amazing sight it was.

I can genuinely describe it as being a truly mind-blowing experience - even more impressive than the Solar Eclipse I saw a few years ago. If you ever get the chance to go and see it - GO!

Fortunately we were very lucky with some unpredicted solar activity - as this chart shows..



This video is from the 13th Feb. taken from a park above Tromsø; it was darker than the city but as you can see there was still plenty of light pollution, some clouds and not a huge amount of Aurora activity.

This was our first glimpse of the Aurora and we thought it was amazing. After this sighting we didn't for a moment consider that we would see anything better than that...



The next day however we took a trip outside of the town to a darker site, the sky was slightly clearer, but amazingly (as the chart above shows) the activity just burst into life. It's difficult to articulate just how amazing it is to see with your own eyes; we had dancing colours whipping across the sky, bands twisting and turning, rays streaming up into space, movement so fast and vivid that it was difficult to keep up, we even saw some very rare corona bursting out from a single point. Sometimes the sky was so bright that it cast feint shadows on the ground, people whooped and cheered with delight as this natural display took their breath away.



These images and video give you a sense of what we saw - but the reality is that you'll have to see it yourself to really appreciated it's majesty.

Enjoy the video.

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