A spectacular aurora show on the boat in the Norwegian Sea.
Apparently we got very lucky. We had a combination of an unusually large solar storm that arrived with pretty much just the right geomagnetic conditions on Earth, and a sparkling clear night to be able to see it all.
Before taking this trip I did not even know that with the naked eye you don’t actually see the colors in the aurora because the color sensitive cones in the human eye are not sufficiently sensitive at the low light level that the auroras produce. So to see the colors you actually have to view it through a camera, who’s sensors are actually sensitive enough.
But, even looking at the sky, with my naked eye, it is a spectacular show with the dynamics, the movement, of the aurora. And this show was so intense that, to a tiny little degree, you could sense some of the color without the camera.
And of course trying to take photos with my cell phone on a wildly windy night, on a rocking boat, doesn’t produce the sharpest photos. So with my eyes I enjoyed much more clarity of this amazing phenomenon.
It was a pretty spectacular night. We didn’t get to bed until around 1:30.