#kirkenes

Kirkenes, 1944

Original caption:

This 3-minute music video, in 4K, features exclusively real-time videos of the Northern Lights, shot from at sea along the coast of Norway in March 2019.

In this video there is no time-lapse and none of the sequences are sped up. The motion is as the eye saw it, though the camera, even in short exposures, picks up the colours better than the eye. Nevertheless, this provides a good approximation of what the eye sees during a good display of aurora.

The green is from glowing atomic oxygen; the lower pink fringes are from molecular nitrogen.

I shot all the sequences from February 27 to March 3, 2019, from the deck of the Hurtigruten ferry and cruise ship the m/s Trollfjord, on the 12-day voyage from Bergen to Kirkenes and back to Bergen, Norway. For a large part of that voyage the ship is north of the Arctic Circle and also under the main band of the auroral oval, making Northern Lights viewing one of the main attractions of the cruise in late autumn to early spring.

On this trip we enjoyed five nights with clear skies and aurora, with the video sequences included here shot on four of those nights: February 27, March 1, 2 and 3. On March 1 we had our best show when the ship was in port in Bjåtsfjord along the far northern coast of Norway.

I was serving as an instructor for a tour group from the Road Scholar educational travel company. See RoadScholar.org.

The music is the composition “Life’s Wonder” by the composer Steven Gutheinz, from the 2014 album Inspiring Minimalism. It is used by kind permission of West One Music. See stevengutheinz.com/music.htm

Website: amazingsky.com eBook on Nightscape and Time-Lapse photography: amazingsky.com/ nightscapesbook.html Blog: amazingsky.net