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Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2002 8:33 pm
by Craft
Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2002 9:09 pm
by airis
Hi!
I think they have special cameras when they take pictures of auroras. I admit the colours in pictures are sometimes very bright. Usually auroras are green and like a big snake moving across sky. That picture is close to my experience.
As a child I was a bit afraid when very bright auroras appeared while I was walking home through dark forest. Nearest streetlamps were over 30 km away, so it was really dark. In October you can add the voice of ice breaking in the lake when temperature is dropping fast below -20 Celsius. It´s a thunderlike voice.
Unfortunately many visitors who come to see northern lights are unlucky. There is no northern lights sometimes for weeks ( depends on sun spot activity and solar flares) and sometimes it´s too cloudy. For example last December it was very quiet. I waited on river ice for hours. Hardly any northern lights. One night I saw two Japanese girls also waiting northern lights to appear. It was windy and -25 Celsius. Sadly they saw nothing.
BTW Arctic circle also changes position every day. It is moving to north 15 m per year.
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Hei Craft. Kiva kun nautit käynnistäsi.

Nordkapissa on jotain maagista, mikä vetää ihmisiä. Jo lapsena tuntui kesäisin jännältä jatkuva ulkomaalaisten virta sinne. Vilkkaimpina päivinä napapiirillä käy pelkästään ulkomaisia busseja kymmenittäin. Muuten viime aikoina minullekin on alkanut tulla ulkomaan kolikoita enemmän.
Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2002 9:23 pm
by smh
Craft wrote:Hmm, I suppose that was not very scientifical... I don't think the physical equator can be so exactly determined, and I suppose it also travels a little, as the other "static" points/places like the poles, polar circles etc...
They really only walked 15 to 20 meters to each side. They put a matchstic in the bucket to make it clearly vissible.
Craft wrote:
I might be wrong, but I think so.
Think you are right. earth is a bit tilted in the solar planar, and IIRC it takes about 26000 years to describe one circle
Craft wrote:
And the polar lights photo doesn't have to be photoshopped or edited otherwise. I'm from southern Finland, and I have seen polar lights here in the south also, but the first time I saw them in the north really struck me! They can be so intense and bright you'd never believe before you see it with your own eyes.
I've seen the polar light once or twice. Probably not as nice as further north since this was at 52 degrees latitude. But to get such a sharp picture of the light requires the shutter to close very fast, and that requires a very sensitive film in such a darkness.
Besides, there is text on the picture and it is digitilased which makes it easy to also touch it a little bit here and there with some software.
Nowadays most of the pictures on cards and magazines are edited
Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2002 9:36 pm
by Craft
Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2002 11:05 am
by Finn
Those who travel to Lapland in summer shouldn't forget mosquitos

Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2002 5:12 pm
by airis
Finn wrote:Those who travel to Lapland in summer shouldn't forget mosquitos


Who is afraid of those tiny little insects?
Actually in this summer there hasn´t been that many mosquitos. But we are not that lucky allways.
BTW Link to that site where I saw that aurora picture. (It was taken March 29th 1999.) Check out the forecast page too. I noticed that they use many seconds (or tens of seconds) exposure times while photographing auroras.
http://cc.oulu.fi/~thu/Aurora/
Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2002 9:16 pm
by smh
Who is afraid of those tiny little insects?
Go to some tropical country and see how afraid you are

Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2002 11:21 pm
by airis
smh wrote:Who is afraid of those tiny little insects?
Go to some tropical country and see how afraid you are

There they spread a lot of dangerous diseases like malaria. Yes, I would really be afraid of them. The cold winter protects us from those kind od worries.

But if you are not immune (like I am), the bites are afterwords really itchy.
Btw in summer reindeer are in big flocks mainly to protect themselves from mosquitos and other insects. They also like open places (like roads) because there is too hot for mosquitos.