17.3.2013 - Aurora borealis

Aurora borealis in the northeastern sky, Kontiolahti, North Karelia, Finland, 17.3.2013

Last evening me, Elina and Leo left Helsinki and drove back to Joensuu. Perfect driving weather. After sunset we started to notice aurora borealis, the northern lights, in northern, eastern and western sky. Couple of stops gave us a magnificent view. We observed the standard green (ionized oxygen) and also faint red (ionized nitrogen). We also observed a flashing corona ("crown") in the "zenith of the auroras", which was - according to a couple of aurora enthusiasts we met by chance - quite a rare sight. Red coronas are understandably even rarer than green ones. During the entire trip from Varkaus to Joensuu the sky was ablaze with outlandish, alien dance of otherwordly colours. If you don't know what aurora borealis are, I recommend you do a bit of a search. The basic wiki article seems to be a good starting point. Basically, sun is at a point of its sunspot cycle activity peak (these go in 11-year cycles), and bombards us with solar winds. Aurorae are easily seen during the spring equinox, due to their higher frequency and generally favourable conditions.

In Joensuu, there wasn't much to do. We grabbed a couple of cameras and drove to Häikänniemi. I was stuck with 50mm/1.8, so not much point in trying to pry the tripod out of Elina's hands. Leo was timelapsing the sky. I punched in some random numbers in full M and shot a couple of artsy pictures. In case you didn't know, artsy means out of focus and generally low quality. Still, I am somehow perversely fond of my low effort.

Most pictures of northern lights are much more vibrant than what we see with our bare eyes. Faint glows become much more visible, but depending on the camera, settings and the photographer's personal aesthetics, the colours may or may not coincide perfectly with those observed. In my picture the greens are yellowish, even though when shot with different WB settings they are much colder in temperature. The faint red-purplish glow in the middle left is nitrogen; however, the reddish glow in the lower right-hand corner is not aurorae, but city lights. Leo's and Elina's pictures paint a much more "truthful" view of what we saw. For example red nitrogen glows are often quite faint when seen live. And, of course, what the pictures lack is the alien movement of the northern lights; the flickering, the dance and everchanging view. But - do not completely trust all the pictures you see.

There's something funny about the way the aurorae move. You don't always see the motion - you just look at the sky and the view changes, but your brain doesn't quite get the movement inbetween. It can be like a series of still images, the newest one already fuzzying your memories of the previous seconds.The finnish name for the phenomenon is "revontulet", literally "the fires of the fox". The mythical fox - not just a red fox, no arctic fox, but the Fox of Fire, runs over the fjells. It's tail writes the aurorae... or sparkles flash from it's fur, pick what suits your imagination more. The more northern the language, the more arcane yet trivial the names become.

No owls. We heard a troll or some other monster, though.