Northern Lights Over The Sea

On late Saturday evening on 17th March it was possible to see the aurora in the sky. I'm never been able to photograph them yet so I decided to go and give it a try. I live in Estonia and spotting aurora here is not very rare but not that common as well. I have seen them many times but only 2 times I remember when they were really bright and moving all over the sky.

I am using 2 different apps to track Aurora. One is named Aurora and another one is Aurorasaurus. They are both almost the same and show real-time data. Whenever there is a possibility to see in my area, the apps will notify me. On this evening it was only 2% chance to see them in North Estonia over the head. In middle Finland and Sweden, the possibility was 70% and aurora over the sky there means I can still see them in the northern sky about 900 kilometers away. Also, I watch real-time cameras from Finland, Norway, and Sweden and I could clearly see strong aurora action there.

ISO100, f3.5, 115sec.
I drove about 15 kilometers away from my home, to be more away from the light pollution the city nearby produces.
This little port is a pretty ideal place to capture northern lights, facing north, nice scenery and relatively dark.

ISO 100, f4, 191sec.
By your eyes, you could hardly see them, but camera captured them nicely. One thing I failed to do was to use more ISO, for some reason I didn't do it and now my shutter times are ridiculous.

ISO100, f3.6, 109sec.
Of course, I wasn't there alone, northern lights chance, location and probably addiction for photographing brings other photographers there as well. You can see these ghostly figures here. Personally, I love this pic, this makes strange feeling in me for some reason. I captured this just for the setting testing purposes actually.

ISO100, f3.5, 10sec.
By 2019 we will reach solar minimum cycle and chances of seeing strong northern lights will decrease drastically here.
Hope to get a couple of more opportunities in this spring till the sky is still dark at nights.

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