Polar night in January 2014

Impres­si­ons from the polar night in ear­ly Janu­ary. A pret­ty uni­que atmo­sphe­re. Opti­ons for acti­vi­ties are obvious­ly quite limi­t­ed during this dar­kest time of the year. Also, the polar bear safe­ty issue has got quite a dif­fe­rent qua­li­ty when you can’t see the­se guys in the distance. Going into nar­row, dark val­leys is a com­ple­te­ly dif­fe­rent thing then. Being clo­se to a vehic­le (car, snow mobi­le) is a big plus on the safe­ty side of things, then. And this way it is easy to get away from the dis­tur­ban­ce of arti­fi­ci­al “big city light” in Lon­gye­ar­by­en, which is essen­ti­al to get a tas­te of the polar night. A dri­ve of a few kilo­me­t­res into Advent­da­len or towards Bjørn­da­len is alre­a­dy a good thing in that sen­se – it doesn’t have to be a big trip at this time of the year. With a snow mobi­le, it is easy to get at least a bit fur­ther into Advent­da­len, and then you have left all arti­fi­ci­al light well behind you. But be careful: at Christ­mas, a local from Lon­gye­ar­by­en mana­ged to dri­ve over a 10 meter cliff with a snow mobi­le in bad visi­bi­li­ty. He mana­ged to escape wit­hout major inju­ries as a mat­ter of gre­at luck. And he is an expe­ri­en­ced dri­ver!

The reward comes in shape of real uni­que light and atmo­sphe­re, as long as the sky is clear. When it is clou­dy, it is essen­ti­al­ly real­ly dark. In our case, we were real­ly lucky with some ama­zing nor­t­hern lights, which were very strong for local stan­dards. Not­hing you should real­ly expect on that level. But it was the time when the sun storm hit the Earth. It did not shake our civi­liza­ti­on, as announ­ced in the media, but it cer­tain­ly put some gre­at auro­ra on the sky!

And I was sur­pri­sed how nice­ly the pan­ora­ma pho­to­gra­phy tur­ned out. My expec­ta­ti­on here was limi­t­ed, but I am very plea­sed by the results. The impres­si­on they give is cer­tain­ly a bit brigh­ter than rea­li­ty, which is dar­ker. When it is clear, you will see enough for lar­ge-sca­le ori­en­ta­ti­on (at least if you know what you are loo­king at and for) once you have got used to the dark­ness. The images, both pan­ora­mas and pho­tos in the gal­lery, are a bit brigh­ter to give you a simi­lar impres­si­on. A tri­pod is essen­ti­al, and a full-frame came­ra and good len­ses are very useful for good results.

Gal­lery: Lon­gye­ar­by­en 2014

Click on thumb­nail to open an enlar­ged ver­si­on of the spe­ci­fic pho­to.

Lon­gye­ar­by­en

Hior­th­hamn

Advent­da­len

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