Aurora hunters
20.05.12
I was in Abisko, 150 miles inside the Swedish arctic circle. At 68 degrees latitude, with hardly any light pollution and sited within a bowl of mountains that give it precious little cloud and thus precipitation, “The Blue Hole of Abisko” is one of the best places in the world to observe the northern lights.
Not only that, but according to Nasa, we were approaching the zenith of a solar maxima, a once-every-11-year phenomenon that produces the most spectacular auroral displays. The orchestra had finished tuning up, the curtains had slipped back, the whole scene was framed by a proscenium of mountains. So why was I lying there looking only at the starry backdrop? The only “tingling nerves” were the ones in my face, now frozen into a grimace. Where was the aurora borealis, the star of the show? Nowhere, that’s where. That’s the thing with mother nature: she’s such a bloody diva.
Earlier that day my six fellow aurora seekers and I had flown from London to Stockholm, then north to Kiruna, and finally driven for an hour to the Abisko Mountain Lodge, our home for the four-night stay. We had come with a new company specialising in “aurora hunting”: getting daily updates from meteorologists and Nasa as to where the lights were most likely to turn up, then heading off there sharpish. Soon after arriving we’d been given a lecture on the northern lights by Urban Brändström from the Swedish Institute of Space Physics. “I have a tendency to get too scientific,” was his opening line.
Source: Financial Times
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