Northern Lights direct from Tromso
This is a truly spectacular Northern Lights video, made from thousands of still photographs, by Tromso resident Ole Christian Salomonsen (that’s at a latitude of nearly 70 degrees north). It needs to be watched – full screen, with the speakers on – rather than talked about, so here it is:
In The Land Of The Northern Lights from Ole Christian Salomonsen on Vimeo.
For those of us marooned on this particular small, rainy island off Scandinavia, and additionally stuck on the bit below 55 degrees north, this is the nearest we’re likely to get to the grand light display in the sky for some time. But it’s definitely on my list of things to see before I die.
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Just in case you’re curious, some numbers for context: London is at roughly 50 degrees north, Newcastle at 55 degrees north and Lerwick in the Shetlands up at the magic 60 degrees north.
For the purposes of comparison, New York is at 40 degrees north, Vancouver at 49 degrees north, Copenhagen at 55 degrees north and Reykjavik at around 65 degrees north (only a tiny fraction of Iceland is actually inside the Arctic Circle) .
We really are very close to the top of the globe in the UK, although sadly not close enough for aurora-viewing purposes.