The Night of Red Auroras

Back to the main page

 

The following two pictures are taken on April 7 2000 around 2:30 AM (23:30 UT) at the border of Vihti and Karkkila, Finland (60 30 N 24 20 E, about 40 km to the northwest from Helsinki). The two original pictures are combined with two digitally painted ones to create a panorama.

The pictures are for non-commercial use only! © Unto K. Laine


During the night April 6/7 2000 the sky of the southern part of Finland was filled with colourfull aurora borealis.

This time the aurora was one of the strongest and most colourfull ever seen over the southern Finland. During the night April 6/7 plenty of red colored auroras were seen. Red colours were present almost all the time in some parts of the sky, mostly at the eastern and western horizon. Two times strong red colored aurora rised high up in the sky: one at about 11:00 PM (20:00 UT) and the second, much stronger one around 2:30 AM (23:30 UT).

 

The two large frames are scanned from the original color prints (resolution reduced) and the small ones are reconstructions made afterwards in order to combine the two originals. The size of the red aurora was so enormous that even with an wide angle lens (35 mm) it was impossible to take a picture of the whole display at once. In some of the pictures nothing else but red colour in different tones was seen. Luckily I took several pictures one after another to different directions which made this reconstruction possible. The red rays started close to the zenith just above the head and part of the rays falled down to the horizon.

I have never seen anything similar to this. These are my first pictures ever taken of aurora. Unfortunately I didn't have time to look after a stand! For this reason the pictures are somewhat "fuzzy".

Some technical facts:

The upper left frame was taken to S-SW direction. The highest part of the picture points almost to the zenith.

The lower right frame was taken to SW-W direction. Thus these pictures should be combined in 3D! However, the reproduced panorama follows well the extremely beautiful scene seen around 2:30 AM.

I had an AKG C460B microphone with preamplifier and a SONY DAT recorder in the place in order to document sounds possibly made by the aurora.

The recordings will be compared to those made during "normal" nights (during nights without auroras) at the same place with the same recording system and in similar weather conditions. The preliminary comparisons have revealed interesting differencies in the sound material . The recording made during the night of the red auroras have clearly stronger low frequency noise than those made during other nights. The study continues.

According to a report given by listeners, auroral sounds were heard about 50 km southeast from the place of these observations and also close to Mikkeli.

More pictures will be released later.


© ukl 18.4.2000