Night at Stokkseyri

My host Krystján pointed out that if I went down the road to the lighthouse I might have luck seeing the Aurora that night. Access is open to pedestrians, and the lighthouse itself is a beautiful callback to somewhat art-deco design.

Cold, clear night. Full moon illuminating the landscape. Snow crust crunching under foot. The Aurora changing so quickly that it’s hard to get my gear out in time to catch the first bright wave. It shoots across the sky the way your breath shoots across cold glass when you breath on it; making a cloud which quickly recedes back to you, until you breath again. It looks like that.

Idiot that I am with my GoPro, even with nighttime settings on, I catch none of the movement. Maybe it’s just not a bright night for the Aurora. But my SLR camera catches it, and I take shots at two second intervals for a second each. The camera’s ISO is boosted to the max for these shots, making it really grainy, but it’s the only way I know to make a quick exposure and catch some of these wonderful shapes in motion.

I put them together here in a rough facsimile of what I saw.