Northern Lights, Finland

I was in Finnish Lapland in early Feb and one of the main objectives of the holiday was to hopefully see the Northern Lights. And we succeeded! We only saw them on one night, but it was an incredible experience.

The Northern Lights are also known as the Aurora Borealis in Northern latitudes. An aurora is a natural light display in the sky. The Northern Lights are more commonly seen at high latitudes, i.e. in the Arctic in the north. We were some way above the Arctic Circle.

I'm too lazy here to mention how the Auroras are formed. See this explanation on Wikipedia.

The night we saw them was bitterly cold, about - 29° C. It was almost 11 pm and close to a full moon so the sky wasn't that dark and of course there was a lot of white snow around. I didn't get any good photos with my camera as I didn't have a tripod, also it was bitterly cold when having to remove gloves to operate the camera!
These photos were taken by Bob Eason -

The photos were all taken on a long time exposure. In this photo, what looks like a brightly lit house is actually a bonfire -

These photos below were taken by our guide Becky. Again the shelter was not lit, it is just the light of the bonfire taken on the long exposure -

I'm the one in blue!