The Aurora Borealis in Finnish Lapland
19 March - 1 April 2025.
19 March - 1 April 2025.
This blog is designed for a screen of a laptop or dekstop computer or a larger size tablet. On phones the date menu is located at the bottom of the menu.
My 16th trip to Rovaniemi and Kätkävaara is about to start.
As the departure is nearing my preparations get more to the point. With a new timer setup my old setup of transmitters and receivers has lost its value to me with regards to these Aurora trips. The knowledge and insights that figuring them out have brought me is on the other hand invaluable and can and will be used in other ways in the future. But it also means that my baggage will contain significantly less items and weight.
Honesty demands to say that I will also take less with me that proved not to have been used in the past years.
24 days and counting...
17 march 2025:
It is neurodiversity week. Neuro diverse people think different, act different. I am one of them. My checklists are running down toward my departure Wednesday 07:00. Last items to take care of and last items to pack...
Checked in on my flights
19 March: Game On!
Search for illegal entering and an illegal stop on the motorway
Just left Arnhem Central Station on my way to Schiphol Airport bound for Rovaniemi, Finland. The most stressful part of the journey. Once at Schiphol I can relax. While spring is about to explode, the Magnolia is heavy loaded, I am going for snow. Well... it is there but the temperatures are way too high. The projected temperature tonight will be -7 celcius which is on the warm side. BUT... the sky should be crystal clear and though the sun hasn't been out of the ordinary I have good hopes for The Lady tonight😃
Security was a breeze as I had booked a slot. The Finnair counter wasn't open yet when I arrived so I kept an eye on the timeframe of my security slot but all went well. Flying businessclass actually gets you a different treatment at the counter. Schiphol is a B I G airport and there are constructions going on like they belong there. Starbucks was gone but then again... it is american so no longer of interest. And as a tiny 'cappucino' from a machine is €4,50 I'm happy to wait for one on board. The A319 just rolled in. Businessclass is no more than a spare seat in a row of three. 
Yesterday and tomorrow it was/will be an A350🤬 so this is the third time 'businessclass'. Hoping to get that A350 on the return flight... or an A330 for that matter. Ah well, it is the OH-LVL so another unique registration added to my list of flown planes, she is 20 years old and looking good.
Arrived at my destination. A simple guesthouse owned by wonderful people that I may call my friends. Todays flights were kind of memorable. Clear skies with only some clouds in mid Finland. Half anhour delay at Amsterdam and half an hour delay at Helsinki but still only 10 minutes late in Rovaniemi. At arrival in Helsinki some 8 military police were looking for someone as all passports were closely inspected at the gate. Departure from Helsinki is odd... the landcape rather quickly changes from grey-ish green-ish okerdarkyellow-ish into almost black and white as frozen lakes cover themselves with snow as does the landscape more and more going north.
Todays and nights counter of images: 4421.
Two of the images from this night. My pickup time is 21:15 and from there it is about an hour drive to our location. About 25 minutes into the ride we find our first checkpoint. I was on the lookout but saw nothing and told Topi, the tour guide of that night to head on to the second point. Having said that I saw in a short flash thru the trees what could be either a cloud or northern lights and as the sky was clear or should be clear I was just in time to get into the parking place of our first checkpoint barely away from streetlighting. On the Stackplot you see this moment as the downward spike in the middle where the Earths magnetic field shortly woke up. That was a good decision as the lights were prominently present! The clients got their moneys worth and we stayed there for a while untill the lights dimmed a bit. Then we drove on to checkpoint two but we passed it as the lights were still the same. UNTIL... 🤯 the heavens exploded. Split second decisions had to be made. We were on a connecting highway between Finland and Sweden and though not crowded... the traffic that goes there drives fast! No headlights in front or on our back! Heavy breaking and the car on the side. Doors open and instructions to the clients came in military manner and urgence. Topi and me keeping eyes on the road to both sides while I also shot a load of pictures from my hand because the tripod was absolutely no option. One car came up and I directed it from far to slow down and be vigilant, that took a lot of my sight because of my headtorch and the lights of the car but safety first. When he had passed and lights were killed I was blind as a bat so I lit my red light, the nigh tmode to see anything close. That was an exciting moment.
The rest of the night the lights were pulsating like a torch being swept over low clouds. I got three series of for timelapses so that is why the huge amount of photos, that will keep me busy for a while.
20 March:
Enjoy both the technique and the Aurora
At the moment very busy with editing and processing the photos of yesterday evening and last night. The photos of the 19th and early 20th are one session and will be taken in the blog of the 19th and so on.
O M G . . . The new cameras and lenses which already baffled me 10 May last year and in september last year... they really did their job last night... That with a certain technique inside and outside the camera just blew me away. It'll take some time to process and publish but oh man... From the hand without tripod because speed on a dangerous road was paramount produced mindblowing results. As soon as I have good examples I will add them here before they appear in the album.
Good advice: always check on the day before the one that is actual. I may be writing both live today and in retro yesterday as image processing progresses with the text.
The spaceweather forcast at this moment is like… dead, zero, nada…. At least for the next hour.
So... As we know the looks of a woman can be deceiving and Lady Aurora is no different to that😁. At the first checkpoint there was only the black version... nothing at all... My very sensitive camera gave me a black hole with little pinpoint stars. So we moved on and didn't stop untill we reached Kätkävaara. Once there and at the viewing location there was a glow in the very far distance that turned out to be a pale far away arc of northern light. The parameters were still impressively negative but I setup my gear anyway. Don't forget that science still has still to find the key to this mystery and lights have been seen while impossible or were absent when the sky should be on fire. Just realize that the DISCOVR satellite is nothing more than a tiny box a million kilometers away in vast outer space while the solar wind is this immensely gigantic huge soup hurtling towards us and that tiny satellite misses way more than it measures. And when you know that solar particles emanate from both CME's and Coronal holes than catch up with each other and mix and enhance... those parameter are nothing more than... parameters.
I'll stop the mumbo jumbo of heliophysics here because... against all odds we got a magnificent display.
So it toook a while but I guess worth waiting for😏
Date menu 📧
21 March:
Stupid mistakes and failing technique
Well the photos of last night will take a little longer. My new cameras harbour settings that are so extensive that I still have to get used to some. That caused me to overwrite things I set but didn't save in the custom settings. Nothing bad, actually theoretical even better, but unnecessary so the files take up more space and transfer time than needed. And with again roughly 4400 files that makes a huge difference. So today I'll be occupied with converting and compressing and backing up 8800 files🤯😭. The sunny side of this: no quality or photos are lost and I gained knowledge over stupidity🤪.
Looking at my photos very very closely I noticed that the sharpness fails. Researching the problem lead to the conclusion that I have been fuzzing around with the lenses some time ago. I did restore the focus setting but underestimated the very much needed micro adjustments that 14mm lenses absolutely need. The stars are now slightly off focus which is no problem with normal use but when you zoom in deep they start showing. So I (think I) refocussed my lenses well this afternoon. The odd thing is that I noticed last night and refocussed on the stars on my LCD back screen. Live as well as viewing the shot it seemed ok then...
Another thing that proved to be off is determination of the dew point, that is the temperature at which everything gets moist or frosted. Either my hygrometer and/or thermometer are off or physics don't apply anymore... The result is that my tripod turned into a popsicle before I knew it so I had to take it apart to let it dry thoroughly. The dew point is specifically important for my lenses to get their heating going.
I always go to bed for some extra sleep before I go out. This time I was in between sleep and wake when I heard my phone beep. As that could be a message about tonight I looked immediately and indeed it was. Tonight there are only two clients that want to do a hunting tour. Now this is something I reject anyway but tonight the insanity is paramount. The Aurora, if she is there, is huge, beyond human comprehension. It is so enormous that it is like a Moose in your living room... if she's there... you will see it, you can not not see it. Specifically from our checkpoints and vantage point and mind you: the sky tonight is crystal clear.
'Hunting' the Aurora is a stubborn misconception that people got in their minds from all kinds of stories from the interweb as dr. Gregory House would say. Some of the stories are cutting it but most are plain bullshit. I wrote an article on this: chasing the lights.
But as our famous dutch soccer player Johan Cruyff put it: "Every disadvantage has its advantage"... I will go "hunt" the aurora in the city. I have specific filters for city lighting. They are for astrophotography and filter out the frequencies of the streetlights. Now I am quite handy with Lightroom and I manage that quite well with the controls of that software and these filter require similar settings so the only thing left to try out is their effect on other colours than green in the Aurora. If they 'fail' I can return them so not too much harm done as they still cost €250 each...
20:28 hrs local time (one hour ago as I write this): my phone rings. Anthony. That is odd, he has family over from England so when he calls the alarms go off. "Pink Corona overhead hurry out!!!". I grabbed the nearest camera and ran out after having mounted myself swiftly in my studded shoes. Shooting from my hand because getting my tripod out the bag (it only is in there when I prepare for going out) would take precious time. A Corona is a volatile appearance of the light, now it's there and now it's gone... speed is of the essence... and just that speed made me sloppy... I had shot some 6 or 7 photos and decided to get my tripod after all because freezing the stars proved to be difficult. So I got my key and... no fit🙄. Right key. Still no fit. SHIT! The door hadn't locked correctly. No worries as the reception is open until 21:00. It should but no one there, she had already left... Damn this is bad🤯. And calling was no option because in my sloppiness I left the phone inside😱🥶. Back to my door, ramming it hoping it would reposition the lock but it didn't. So I took the key and tried all kind of tilting and turning until it suddenly found a way in... man... there is a comparison for that...😁😆
But once I got out with my tripod so much time had passed that the lights had gone. Making use of all the fuzz and being out already I mounted one of the filters for streetlights and did my tests. They suck. Short and clear as that. I will write about that outside this blog.
Date menu 📧
22 March:
Slow day and mayhem night
Today has a slow start. No photos from last night except for that one here in the parking space at my apartment. I just stitched one panorama from Thursday night and placed that above at the 20th. I have two main dishes on todays menu: no first but mixed stitching panoramas of last Thursday and creating a timelapse of them and studying the Stellarmate guiding computer of my telescope. Those two will actually keep me busy for a few days.
I just checked both Earth and Space weather conditions. Tonight should be the last clear one of nights to come. The moon is absent (below the horizon and not rising) for day 3 out of 5 which is excellent as it is on its way to a new moon when it rises again (yes I took this into my planning this trip🤓). The dew point will be quite high because of relative humidity so I will definitely have to use the dew heaters for my lenses. Spaceweather is a bit tricky, now it is looking hopeful but that is for Siberia. The earliest that we can say anything about it is (at this moment) 54 minutes in advance so that will be in about half an hour for conditions around 19:45 local time (17:45 UTC) And then at the exact actual moment the Earths magnetic field has to be active otherwise the effect will be quite disappointing. Well that is the actual situation at this moment of writing 18:16Z (the Z means local who ever made that up🤔)
Well... got home 15 minutes ago after a dynamic evening with The Lady! At the first checkpoint I almost immediately saw she was there and we got everyone out of the car. Then we also stopped at the third checkpoint before moving on to our final destination. And once there she really did show herself and kept us looking for the rest of the evening.
23 March:
Nah... nothing much to tell, one of those days...
Breakfast. At home I just grab something which goes down the hatch. Here it is breakfast. A treat😋😃
Hint: when you see this logo at the bottom of an image you know that that image was constructed from the photos of two cameras thus being a panoramic view. Note that this can be either horizontal or vertical.
I have replaced two photos at the 19th, your cache may still show the old ones.
Date menu 📧
24 March:
Shopping and processing
Today is a bit of a lame day. Except for last nights group photo with the Aurora partly hidden behind clouds the lights were all but impressive. If you have seen them for the first time and this was the purpose of your visit then it was absolutely worth it. I on the other hand am a spoiled little bitch... The group photo however is one fine piece of craftsmanship. Balancing the sharpnes of both the stars and the people and balancing the light on the people with the light of the aurora is quite a challenge when you take into account that you don't want a much disturbing light cone on the street in front of the people.
The rest of the day I spent partly in town boosting Rovaniemi prosperity.
The forecast for tonight is snow from 23:00. My most reliable meteo are MET.no, Clear Outside and Windy. They are subscription level good so yes I pay for them and they are frequently right specifically when they independent agree.
The spaceweather is not much better at the moment. Tomorrow night onto Wednesday is more interesting specifically because of Earth meteo. In both cases it remains to be seen what the magnetic field of our planet intends to do, being the most illusive of factors.
There are no clients tonight which is perfectly logical now that you've read the above. So time to process shots of the last days and catch up with some extra sleep. If more images emerge during the evening they will be here. Just don't hold your breath.
25 March:
Trouble with the donuts and a crazy night
Last september I used my new gear for the first time and didn't do two things: I didn't make vertical panorama's and I didn't have the dewheaters. Now that I am in full swing the problems with these two additions start to show in the panorama's and the stars. The first one, the panorama's, are a well deserved stupidity of my own as I found out that a different physical shape of the lenses and the assembly on the tripod had already caught my attention at home. Having tackled that new configuration I should have prevented that problem in overlap of the images. The donut shaped stars however are a completely different story out of my hands. They are caused by a flaw in the focussing system of my €1600 lenses. Each that is. When i attach my dewheaters the focus ring, which by the way is in the LOCKED position... shifts just enough to get the stars something like a micrometer out of the correct focus position before it actually locks itself. On this cut out the stars are insanely enlarged but... that is the whole point when you choose to go for stitching two cameras with 61Mpix each... So Sigma Benelux can expect a call about this as soon as they open today.
Okay so I have had contact with an engineer of Sigma. We both agreed that the switch, once flipped, physically disconnects the focus motor so that would be a highly unlikely cause. Then I got a brainwave... switching on electronics, with either an AC or DC current generates an electromagnetic pulse... what if that pulse is strong enough to influence the state of the focus motor? This thought definitely drew the attention so now to await a further investigation...
The rest of the day was dedicated to building a first timelapse from 1962 images. The result isn't there yet but the raw stuff looks promising. When stitching together multiple images the whole process gets quite a bit more complicated.
The evening started as usual with my pickup at 21:15. As soon as we were on the E75 to Kemi I could already discern the aurora and from that location under harsh street lighting is a promising sign. At the first stop on the road to Aavasaksa (2nd parking) We saw the aurora quite well, not spectacular but for first sighters a checked box. After about ten minutes I told Mika to drive on to the 2nd stop a few km further down the road where darkness is noticeable deeper. On the way there I kept an eye on the sky but as the lights were getting dimmer while we drove I just wanted to get my head out, do a quick scan of the sky and didn't expect anything worth while. So we got on the parking and I stuck my head out. Not much... turned my head upside down to look at the sky over the roof of the van... It was like a zipper had opened a rift in the heavens, a narrow extremely bright ribbon was 90 degrees above us. I tumbled out of the car sliding open the side door yelling to get out. Such a burst can last a while but it sometimes is over in seconds.
Date menu 📧
26 March:
Lows, fiinally filled albums and The DreamTeam
I am feeling sloppy, things bother me and take my razor sharp edge away. Though I manage to keep the outside world on a distance I do so hardly. To many things have gone wrong in the past months, to many people are clueless to what they're doing. And what is happening across the pond in 3rd Reich 2.0 has been getting under my skin as well. I left home a week ago without the eager that is always so profound present when I go to Finland. Add to that the fact that my dear friend Anthony who is my buddy on the Aurora tours had way more important things to take care of and the conclusion is that to many factors are influencing my autistic part. That diagnosis isn't there for nothing. Things are not as they are supposed to be and so yes... that makes me sloppy. Anthony should be joining tonight. The fun we have makes up for the worst of clouds and the absence of the Aurora.
My albums are starting to fill so have a look at them because there are way more images in there than here in the blog. As this is an ongoing process both the daily images and the march 2025 albums will randomly fill. Photos of last night will also appear on the blog above at their date. Images of the 19th and 20th will take much more time as I shot 8800 in those two days.
Anthony came to pick me up at the usual time, 21:15. The team is back together😃 so now the fun part finally starts. Nothing wrong with the other guides but Anthony and I fit seamlessly together in entertaining the clients which is huge fun🤣.
Already from the Kemi motorway E75 I could see that there was activity in the sky. A bit hesitant at first as much glare of the street lighting is in the windshield and side window but I could hardly be off. At the first stop there are two problems. One is the presence of other people and guides that can give some sort of unwanted crowd specifically when they just won't switch off their lights of whatever sort. second problem is that it isn't just that dark enough as Rovaniemi city lights and E75 lights are still dominant. The next stop is hardly 10 minutes away so we sped on to the transmission tower. And that decision was the jackpot of the evening...
Upon arrival the lights were visible but that was about it and after a minute or 3-4 we prepared to go on as suddenly one spot started growing a glowing pillar. Anthony was the first to see that and he halted our departure. A good decision because the aurora started filling the sky. Words cannot describe very well what happend so the photos will be here soon but there a quite a few. We stayed there for 25 minutes and then moved on. There was no noticeable activity anymore until we went home. Driving thtough the wilderness the light revived an we made a ten minute stop to again appreciate what the solar wind and the Earths magnetic field showed us. And like if that wasn't enough we stopped again at the transmission tower as again... the lights revived🤩. The lights stayed there and were still photographically visible when I came home. I actually had to go by the parking lot behind the guesthouse because the slope on the side has a lethal skin of ice on it. Which reminds me as I write this that we have to dispence grit on it...
Date menu 📧
27 March:
Setting the record and finishing the first timelapse of this trip
Well... though the most spectacular occurrence I ever saw was on 14 march 2018 and that my trip in march 2018 was the best by far sofar... this trip I'm having now is going to win the overall prize. The lights are exceptional colourful. For me this started on my last trip last september but now outperforms that. It even wins from the former cycle top in 2014. Upcoming september is expected to be this like as well and then the top of cycle 25 will be on its way down for another roughly 11 years.
O M F G 🤯 😱 🤩 😍
My screen just exploded... the lights of last night are from another world... THIS IS INSANE!!!
I need time to process this, brace for impact...
The technique I use shows me a sort of "this is about what to expect" on the back screen of my cameras. That back screen is nothing more than an indicator anyway but my technique reveals its true content only on the computer. It ultimately gives me way more structure in the aurora.
The egg has been layed. Sort of... so many photos and so many timelapses. This will keep me busy for quite some months to come. I can't wait for my retirement in just over 4 years. I have a great job but working costs way too much time🤪. But for now... go to my album 'march 2025' or the daily images under 'current' - 'travel' - 'daily images'.
The clouds are to many to get decent photos. It is questionable but as there are no clients for the regular tour and Anthony isn't going I decided to stay at home. There may be a short opportunity and I am going to try my luck from the railway bridge which can give me the lights over the city skyline. The space weather is typical for a Coronal Hole stream so if at any time the data looks good and the sky has a big enough gap I have about 30 minutes to reach the bridge, a timeframe that is just possible.
Date menu 📧
28 March:
What will be todays catchy title🤔🤨
Last evening I spend working on the first timelapse of this trip. After I finally came to the conclusion that this wasn't the easiest of material to prepare for the timelapse sequence I did some concessions to the quality and finally rounded things off. It is ready to be published but as it is a video file I cannot just place it on any page. Next thing to figure out is how to incorporate videos on my website. I know the software can do it but I still don't know how to make the software do it. Keeps you on your toes...
The Earths weather is not looking good for the upcoming nights. The middle layer of clouds has fully closed and as it looks now it will take until monday on tuesday, my last night here, to get so much of an opening that you can have a fairly good peek through the clouds to see all the way through to space. Normally and so probably not good for photography but not impossible as clouds can occasionally give an interesting effect.
UPDATE: monday evening getting better!😃
Space weather on the other hand is not looking very encouraging either. The huge coronal hole that has been bombarding us is now turning away and the only thing that is providing any hope before my departure is sunspot group 4043. If that delivers anything of an M-class CME or higher and does so between 24 and 36 hours from now it might be just in time for monday on tuesday. And then there is the fucking daylight savings time or better: Darkness Suffering Time. Not only takes it another hour of reaching nautical darkness but it also causes the Aurora to be a full hour later🤬🤬🤬🤬
The internet connection is quite problematic at the moment…
I am very pleased with 'Windy'. Windy is an app with very extensive weather forecasts and I use it as well as 'Xasteria' which is more suitable for astrophotography. Both provide very good information. I use Windy specifically for clouds, airflow and precipitation. From left to right: clouds average, cloud density, clouds with precipitation and airflow on mid hight. Together they give you a pretty good view on the situation in the last hours and the forecast.
Update: sunspot group 4046 produced a respectable X1,14 CME moments ago. Slight problem... straight into the 90 degree void so it will never reach Earth. Opportunity: a beautiful sideview of the event. To see the event click the photo of the sun! This is the actual event as it happens! These CME's are part of the cause of the Aurora.
Tonight was not very good on one side as a lot of mid altitude clouds were closing the sky. But... Kätkävaara is notorious in neglecting weather forecasts. And around 22:30 the southern stream, confirmed by the cloud radar, opened the sky. The hill is a sort of ski-jump to the wind and when the cloud layer is thin enough the ascending wind punches a hole in them. And so it did. Photos to follow...
29 March:
Jaw on the floor
Solar Eclipse starts 10:17 UTC! Maximum at 10:47:18,4 UTC.
This morning I was browsing through my iPhone 13 Pro Max files and found an Aurora photo that I took as I had my cameras shooting a timelapse. I had nothing to do so I was just messing around with my phone and took some pictures to see how far I could stretch the camera's envelope. Nice but not impressive. On the other hand it looked quite realistic with that pale green. So far so bad... well... not so bad after all. This morning I pulled that shot through my computer and as it is a raw file there is more in there than initially meets the eye. Being an Apple adept I still have my reservations to phone cameras. Okay... so that reservation is definitely down the drain. This is what was in that file and that I pulled out of it. Never saw that one coming...
So I did something incredibly stupid... I accidentally deleted a template on my website and 💥 POOF 💥 all my Aurora albums vanished 🤯😱😖😭🤬. There is a backup at the provider side but that is not an easy restore so I have to rebuild the lot. From where I now am I can only do that for the album of this trip which I already did. The rest of all former 11 years have to be rebuild from home as I don't have those files on my computer but on my external drive at home. I was adding the timelapse and that messed with my album menu so I thought: let's clean that up. Well... that worked quite well...🫣🤦🏼♂️
Damage has been repaired as in the structure of the albums is there again. Once at home and reconnected to the external drive the albums are there again. On the fly I removed doubles... cleaning after all...
No tour tonight. Just no clients and Anthony has other things keeping him occupied so a chance for me to fuckup and repair🤪.
Date menu 📧
30 March:
Home alone
Daylight savings time, one hour ahead. Bloody stupid system costs me 1 full hour of darkness every day🤬
I am the only guest left so I have this whole Guesthouse to myself, well the corridors anyway. And as the reception is closed I may be the only living thing around. So after breakfast I chatted with funny bubbly Sofia from the reception until she left. The Guesthouse has been my home 16 times for the last ten years. It's located outside of the city centre and my room is away from the street south by south-east. Following the curvature of the planet the high skies just over the horizon must also be visible from Russia as the distance to that border isn't that far. But now that construction sites are nearing that view sadly will soon be a thing of the past. It is actually located on the shore line of the ancient Baltic Sea from the late Ice Age.
The end of this trip is coming closer. Only two more nights left. The sun is on the top of her cycle so there will be some auroral activity but the big shows are not expected until Tuesday and beyond. MET.no is the weatherforecast of choice and it has been showing fairly good conditions on my last night for days in a row so my hope is on that last night. Tonight is projected not that good but cross checking Windy tonight may not be that bad. If there are no clients I will go to the railway bridge again. There are more good spots, better even, but I want the Aurora over the city skyline.
Well as Anthony always puts it: "We get what we are given".
At breakfast on Monday thru Saturday I always watch the morning program on the television in the dining room. A few days ago there was an interview with Finnish singer Ida Elina and she opened the program with a song from her latest album. I stopped and listened as the music and her voice cut straight into my heart and I instantly got goosebumps all over...Under The Northern Skies by Ida Elina
Temperatures only come down to some 2.5 - 3 degrees celcius below zero. Thaw is the word and that makes the bigger patches melt over the day but freeze over in the night. At our viewing site this makes the path we walk very slippery. So at arrival I took a shovel and started building snow bridges where absolutely needed while Anthony and Daniel took care of all other things to look after. A snow bridge is a layer of snow over the ice so you are able to walk across. The evening was quite a disappointment for the clients. The Aurora was far away and quite faint and that was put optimistic. There was some which was just sufficient to make a group photo with the green backdrop but that was about it. The satellite data gave us a last bit of hope for around 00:55 - 01:05 but the thin spikes that showed in sync didn't to anything to the human eye. As I am writing this I am downloading all that my cameras saw into my laptop in the hope they deliver anything that we still can give the clients... hope dies last...
Date menu 📧
31 March:
I just checked in on my flight home. A cramped up fully and over booked A321 on the first leg to Helsinki.
The last full day is here. A day that will be in the sign of processing photos if applicable and preparing for the last night. These preparations are somewhat different from the others as I will leave tomorrow morning at 07:45. What is different is that I have to pack my suitcases today in such a way that when I come home between 02:00 and 02:45 I must be able to let all the stuff 'just fall into' its pre-destined place in the suitcases. As this has been meticulously sorted out in the three weeks before I left for this trip that will work out pretty fast. The other advantage is that I know, without a scale, which suitcase will have which weight so there will be no weight hassle at the drop off counter in the airport.
The Earth weather is what we call by an old saying in the Netherlands "a dime on its side". Our old Guilder dime was a tiny very thin coin which could only just stand on its side. So it will tip over but to which side is not predictable. Met.no reports clouds to be clear low and clear high layers but a closed mid deck. Windy reports the same with a good visibility but also a nearby closed or closing low deck and an airflow west by north-west should keep that lower deck out of the way just long enough.
Spaceweather is hard to say. The sunspots were absent in the last few days and the ginormous coronal hole has long gone. A new one is taking shape but is more normal in size and to late for me. So a light to moderate show is what I anticipate but... I've seen very unexpected things so being vigilant is paramount at all times! Any more concrete data from the DSCOVR satellite will get some meaning no earlier than about 20:15 from which the measured solar wind will take approximately an hour to get to us. And as I wrote earlier in this blog... then the Earths magnetic field still has to respond.
On arrival in Kätkävaara the sky was still closed but that was expected. So as Anthony was not with me I took his place and started Aurora's Tale. Once that was done the first stars and the moon came by to say hello. So everyone came out of the Kota to see if anything was happening. At some point in time I thought I had caught the purple of the Aurora but it turned out to be the last bit of twilight. Or was it... very hard to make sure with all the clouds in the way. One thing was certain: the clouds were moving as expected. But once having cleared the sky... nothing... when suddenly the tree line became more defined🧐. A quick shot of my camera confirmed the presence of the Aurora, faint and distant but hey! Who cares if that is what you came for! And as a bonus the Milky Way is in there too!
01 April:
I am in HEL now. Not as bad as it sounds though Just the ICAO code for Helsinki. After having roamed the shops and having had two of the very best cappucinos that you can imagine I'm now settled in the most quiet place imaginable: my gate 4 hours prior to departure. My Airbus A350 OH-LWG is already wating for me.
Epilogue:
It is now 2 april. Back home the albums are restored and the files are transferred to my main disk. This trip, once having purged the first round of cleaning up delivered over 14,000 photos both individual as in some 7 or so timelapses.
I almost lost a suitcase. It came out of the process heavily damaged with the wrapper almost torn off AND lacking the tiny stickers with the wrapper number... not good...
In the upcoming weeks all the photos will be processed and progress in that lenghty and tedious process will be reported in my main blog.
Also the first preparations will take place for my next trip in the form of a prepared blog page with a countdown timer.