The Right Place at the Right Time

It was an entirely random choice. It’s more spoken than sung and the lines “For the same reason no one ever pointed a telescope at the sun” made me chuckle. The halting and familiar spoken English from Red Angel Dragnet hit the spot.

Humans are willful and apparently we have been pointing telescopes at the sun for hundreds of years. Maybe someone got bored and so started counting blemishes. Boredom continued and then someone realized the blemishes have an eleven-year rhythm. To add scientific rigor to this odd pastime, the cycles were numbered more retrospectively than not and we are within the high point of Cycle 25.

For the longest of time, happiness could be defined by lots of sunspots and a calmness in the sun’s demeanor. Not today: the angry bee syndrome—flares, storms, burps—once dreaded, now exactly what we want. I’ve traded one sophisticated electromagnetic “detector” for another. Gone is my amateur radio gear, replaced by spiffy, modern cameras.

I always thought I was a serious “fella” about my hobbies. However, my gear didn’t seem to pass muster for the job at hand. Stan, my random cabin mate, has taken pity and armed me with a far better lens to capture the vagaries and spontaneity of the Aurora, Northern Lights to many.

Being here wasn’t a random choice. However, by rights, the winter North Atlantic should be buffeting this archipelago with rain, cloud, wind— think Shakespeare’s “Tempest”. Instead, Thor and Loki have decamped to Spain: the night is clear and still, stars everywhere. Thinking tomorrow is the same, is simply naive.

That alignment is rare. What is almost infinitely rarer is to overlay this with the “angry bee” syndrome. The sun has temporarily gone bonkers and we are in the midst of a solar storm the likes of which haven’t been seen for ages. Flares, burps and ejections on a Biblical scale.

Parked under the Aurora in Arctic Norway provides a vantage point that lets you see color. For most, the Aurora is simply grey wisps and streams in the sky brought to life by modern camera sensors far more sensitive to weak color than the human eye. Truth is our night vision is “film noir”, more black and white than color.

Its transitory.

We see bursts of colored curtains dancing across the sky to then periods of nothing beyond solitary thoughts of cold toes and the possible onset of frostbite.

It’s back, it’s behind us, it’s moving fast and we pivot. Tripods in a neat line, headlamps forbidden and extinguished after a chorus of “turn it off…”. It’s here now and might be gone instantly, time is of the essence. The smart amongst us have hands in pockets pressing the shutter remotely. Note to self: buy one. My fisherman’s fingerless gloves offer dexterity to snap, once, twice, thrice but I have to stop and stuff them into a pocket.

The group has power. We are willed along, stragglers dragged further into the night. It’s midnight, 1am, 2am and the show continues. We’ve changed location but always with broad skies and some kind of water in the foreground, a lake, an outgoing tide or a fickle and naughty incoming tide.

Sunday has drifted into Monday and “day one” of the workshop is in the bag. We know that we are lucky, we’ve hit pay dirt. We are in the right place, at the right time and greedily expect tomorrow to be as good.

It far exceeded my wildest expectations. Beautiful, ephemeral and quixotic. I waited a long time for this moment and I guess if this was it, I wouldn’t be tearful. The Lofoten archipelago in daylight is remarkable and as a backdrop to the Aurora simply stunning.

Thank you Stan for the loan of a better lens. Thank you Laura, Jabi and PhotoPills making this workshop possible. Thank you Norway for being such a great place. And a big thank you to our local main sequence star, you maybe a common garden variety but you did us proud tonight!