I woke up this morning kind of late, and what sun we do get right now was up high in the sky. I went to get breakfast and was stunned by the view I saw. I came in yesterday afternoon after the sun had long set, but was able to tell that the ocean was there when I went out to see the aurora. What I found in my new back yard today was astounding, and I immediately grabbed my camera to go take some pictures. The storm brewing off to the north made for a striking view against the crystal blue sky. The V-shape in the clouds to the center is real, not an artifact of the panorama stitch. At the horizon on the left side of the clouds there's actually the end of a rainbow; it's hard to see at the resolution Picasa uploaded this panorama unfortunately, so you'll have to download the full size photo to see it.
A view of the rocket range itself, nestled underneath the rugged mountains of the Norwegian fjords.
My bootprints making their impression on the Arctic beaches.
A little hard to tell, but the water is unusually clear up here. I need a polarizing filter to really get this shot to show up right.
Here's our sandy beach!
Noontime outside of Bleik, Norway (HDR)
Noon skies of Bleik, Norway (HDR)
Frosted trees by a lake between Andenes and Sortland, Norway (HDR)
Group of reindeer getting ready for take-off.
They decided to stop and look at the funny tourists. I hadn't known before this trip that there are white reindeer. These were seen during our trip through Bleik to Sortland.
This is a view of Andenes from the mountain behind the rocket range. The range is off to the left from here; you can see the red light on the end of the ring of cliffs that surround the range. It was a great climb; I went straight up the inside of the ring. It took about a half hour to get to the top. From above, it was easy to spot the trails on the not-so-steep side, and I took those to the road to the Alomar LIDAR station to get back down and around to the range for the return trip. It was completely dark when I got back, even though it was only about 3:00 PM. That's why the photo looks a little blury around the lights. Even if I had brought a tripod with me, I don't think I would have wanted to carry it up that cliff face.
For reference, this is typically what the shore here at the rocket range looks like.
Here's what the shore looked like today (22 Nov). The picture doesn't really give you much scope of how violent the seas were, how brisk (and cold!) the wind was, and how quickly even my cold-developed body was yelling at me to quit taking pictures and get inside. It's been strange having southerly winds blowing out to sea; this northern wind is vicious! And I was hoping to go swimming today. Maybe tomorrow...
This photo was featured by the Picasa team, so I guess I'll explain it a little. I'm in Andenes preparing for a sounding rocket experiment (part of my Ph.D. work), and went out last night with my camera hoping to catch some aurora. There was a little, but nothing really unusual. I figured it would be a good chance to at least figure out how to set the camera to get good shots. After a little while, the aurora started to brighten, and then almost instantaneously broke out into a huge storm. The photo doesn't show the red light as well, but there was a good mix of color, and a ring formed, expanded, swept across the sky and danced all around me. The storm only lasted about two minutes, and I was very fortunate to have been there to witness this show. I did get some other photos, so I'll try to put a few more up when I get a chance. I'll have some more too when I get up to Svalbard for the launch. Thanks, everyone, for the comments!
A few more aurora pictures from the storm the other night.
This is later in the storm, when it had burst out into curtains all around the sky, dancing around. (The 5 second exposure makes it appear all over at once, when in reality it moved from one place to another fairly rapidly during that time.) You can see the distinctive veil-like texture the formation gets during this type of activity.
This is a different storm, and was very striking against the clouds in the background.
After a long snowstorm this morning, lunchtime was just beautiful, and the clouds reflected off the ocean to give it a nice pink hue! On the right side, you might notice someone was actually crazy enough to go for a swim...
This shot gives some perspective on how far out I was.
This is not an auroral formation; this is the Alomar LIDAR facility. (The actual buildings are behind the mountain from this perspective.) The laser is used to take measurements of the middle atmosphere, and is very visible when it's running at night.
This is the launcher from which our rocket is going to take off! I took this photo the morning I left for Svalbard, so I won't actually get to see the launch itself.
