Oh boy, March 23rd is a date that I will cherish for a long, long time. I was doing my course at home when all of a sudden, I got an alert that there would be aurora lights over Denmark. Well, let me tell you, I didn’t waste a single second – I grabbed my camera and bolted out the door towards Gilleleje like a cheetah chasing its prey!
You see, I’ve been trying to capture those elusive aurora lights in Denmark for over two years, but they’ve always been playing hard to get. But not that night! I was so excited that I could barely contain myself! And boy, oh boy, was it worth it! It turns out that it was the most powerful aurora of the last six years! The magnetic storm was off the charts, reaching G4 (Kp8)! The Kp value in Kiruna even hit Kp9, the highest value possible!
It was the sight out of this world! I had a blast! But, remember, what you see and what the camera sees are two different things. I used a long exposure to capture the lights, which means my camera could pick up more light than the naked eye. Although the lights were visible to the naked eye, the colors were only visible through the camera lens. I could only see a silver shadow with my eyes, and when the lights exploded, the whole sky lit up like a Christmas tree – no colors, though. Still, it was an experience that I would never forget.