Five days of night at sub-zero temperatures in a frost and snow-covered land. Sounds horrible, doesn't it? Well, it wasn't. It was five of the most incredible days of my life!
My family and I decided to take a winter holiday to Arctic Norway for one simple reason. We wanted to see the Northern Lights... in real life. So we booked our travel from home, currently being the lovely country of England, to Tromsø, Norway. Of course, me being the shutterbug that I am, I had to pack two bags. One for my clothes and sundries and the other for my camera gear.
When we arrived in Tromsø it was early evening and pitch black outside. You see, in places that far north the sun never breaks over the horizon in winter so there are only a couple of hours of daylight in the afternoon, but the light quality is like having a really long period of dusk. My kids had a difficult time with so few daylight hours, but I loved it! The light was so great for taking pictures and that special "magic hour" you hear photographers talking about lasted more like three hours, and with the stunning landscape of Norway I wasn't about to miss the chance to get a few daylight shots of the mountains and fjords sprawling all around me. Everywhere I looked the view was breathtaking.
When the light of day was gone my eyes went from taking in the beautiful scenery on the horizon to taking in the beautiful scenery of the dancing arctic skies. Our timing for this trip couldn't have been better. Not only did we have "fair weather," meaning no rain or snow during our stay, but we just happened to be in the arctic during a major magnetic storm. This was fantastic news for those of us looking to see the aurora because the suns' radioactive particles passing by earth are what cause these incredible light displays. The science behind it is pretty amazing.
I'm not a scientist, so I'm going to give you the best explanation as I understand it. The aurora lights are actually a very interesting phenomenon. The sun has storms within the great ball of gas, which can often release massive flares of charged particles and solar winds. When those charged particles pass the Earths' magnetosphere they are drawn in to the north and south magnetic poles. As the charged particles are drawn in they excite the air molecules surrounding Earth, causing them to illuminate as they calm; like the molecules in a neon sign.
In the Viking Age, Norse myth described the aurora as a rainbow bridge known as Bifrost. The Norse believed that Bifrost was a bridge of fire, earth, and water extending over a vast, impassable ocean and connecting Midgard (middle earth) to the heavens of Asgard, which they believed was the home of the gods. Pretty fascinating stuff, right?
