Faithful readers of this blog know I have a passion for the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights. I was blessed enough to have seen them three times from an airplane window during winter night crossings of the Northern Atlantic Ocean, and I’ve shared those stories here and here. Unfortunately, The Significant Other was never with me when the magic happened. So we continued to have the dream to one day see the “Dancing Lights” together, during a winter travel to Norway, Finland or Iceland. But then, this past Friday, the Aurora Borealis unexpectedly came to us, in the night something magic happened…
What happened in the skies over Germany this past Friday is a very rare occurrence, as the “Dancing Lights” can normally only be seen in the areas around the North or South Pole. But the Earth is currently experiencing the first “extreme” solar storm since 2003, a classification given when a solar storm reaches level five on the five-level scale. The result: colorful auroras in the sky over our house in Southern Germany. But not only there, but world wide, as became apparent when looking at my Insta-Feed the next day. The Aurora was visible across the Alps and even further south, as far as Italy and Spain. And also in the USA, as documented by some beautiful shots from my former home state Oregon.
The Northern Lights occur at an altitude of 70 to 800 kilometers in the atmosphere when the electrically charged particles of the solar wind stimulate the molecules in the atmosphere to emit light of a certain wavelength: Green auroras, for example, are produced by excited oxygen atoms at an altitude of around 120 kilometers, red ones by oxygen atoms at an altitude of around 200 kilometers. Nitrogen, in turn, produces violet to blue auroras.
Friday afternoon I have seen something about the extreme solar storm on my news feed. The article wasn’t mentioning polar lights at all, instead pointing out the dangers of possible interference of the solar winds with global communication. But I thought myself to check the night sky just for the fun of it, never seriously considering the possibility the Aurora would be visible as far South as the Nuremberg region. I must admit I might even have forgotten the whole thing, when around 11pm Big Boy came down saying he has seen a post in a local Facebook group with a photo of Polar lights in the sky above Nuremberg.
So we all took our phones and scrambled up to our 2nd floor bedroom windows to check. From my previous experience I knew that it is hard to spot the Aurora with the naked eye. But proof is easy to get. Point the iPhone to the night sky and do a long exposure (basically only switching off flash function) of about three seconds. And there it was – clearly a bright green sky to the North. Over the course of the next 90 minutes the Polar Lights became much more intense, became clearly visible to the naked eye and spreading across the whole sky.
Make no mistake, you need a camera and its residual light amplification to see the real colors everybody knows from photographs and videos. But a smartphone is enough, as all these photos in the post were taken with our iPhones handheld. For The Significant Other any myself it was a totally unexpected dream come true, in the night something magic happened. We went outside into the yard to fully enjoy what was happening in the clear night sky above our house, and spend almost two hours watching that natural wonder unfolding in the star spangled sky above us.
We send some images to friends and family, couldn’t believe our luck. Big Girl, who is currently spending time in our Southern Home in Genoa, was utterly frustrated she is away and unable to see this truly once in a lifetime nature event. But then more magic happened. She was seeing the Aurora also down in Italy, and captured some images with the same effects we saw from the balcony of Home (South). How crazy is this? Polar Lights in Italy????
How totally insane….instead of spending much money and traveling far north to see the Aurora, the Aurora came to us. In a natural splendor that was truly breathtaking. For sure a night that we will remember the rest of our lives. The night something magic happened.
All photographs taken with the iPhone 14 Pro. Images straight out of camera, no post-processing.
Have a great Sunday
Marcus
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