Friday Photo #305 – November Aurora

Photo: Aurora filling the sky over Nappstraumen, Flakstadøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. November 7, 2018. 21:48

In what has been a reliability disappointing start to the aurora season on Lofoten this year – mostly due to near constant bad weather – the sky finally exploded last night in probably the best aurora I’ve seen in the 2018/2019 northern lights season. And more importantly, it wasn’t even forecast to happen – it was only that the sky was clear – the only forecast which actually matters for northern lights!

A solar storm had arrived a few days previously, with other areas enjoying some nice aurora, while it remained cloudy here on Lofoten, and thus, nothing. And a solar storm is supposed to arrive in another day or two, in which it will probably be cloudy again. But Wednesday night, the sky was clear, so I kept watch out my office window.

An aurora arch eventually formed low on the northern horizon around 20:30 so so. Remaining faint for a while, I didn’t wander down to the beach until a little after 21:00. The aurora slowly picked up in intensity over the next 30 minutes or so until 21:45 when the sky absolutely exploded with dancing aurora everywhere! Even with this exposure of 1.3 seconds, pretty fast by northern lights standards, you can the aurora is quite blurred, that is how fast it was moving!

This lasted around 10 minutes before eventually fading away again. I was smart enough to put my rain boots on, but I ended up with waves crashing over my knees on several occasions, so got completely soaked! But luckily it was a relatively mild night for November. I waited around until about 23:00 or so, but never so the intensity of before. And so I eventually walked back home…

Camera Info:
Nikon D885
Sigma 14mm f/1.8
14mm
ISO 2500
f 1.8
1.3 seconds
WB Daylight