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Cunard Queen Elizabeth 2019
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Tromso - Sunday 13 October

Described as the “Gateway to the Arctic” we have visited Tromso before on the way to Svalbard on the QE2 in 2008 . So we have previously visited the city, and the Arctic cathedral and the cable car, all in bright sunny summer weather. The area suffered in WWII and from the cable car there is a view of the memorial to the German submarine Tirpitz, which was sunk off the island of Hakoya.

The Queen Elizabeth was berthed on the edge of town near the hospital at Breivika Cruise Terminal. There was a shuttle bus to the Radisson Blu Hotel in the town centre which went through one of many tunnels under the town. The footpath to the Tromso Botanical Garden was signposted from the port gate. It may be good to visit, but in the summer. It was Sunday so most of the shops were closed and the town was empty.

It had been cold overnight with a light sprinkling of snow so care was taken when walking along the boardwalk passing the marina, to reach Stortorget. This is the centre of town with the Concert Hall facing the Roman Catholic Cathedral. It is the furthest north Roman Catholic cathedral in Norway. Mass was to begin at 1100 so the building was open but only the bishop, one nun, and one other person were sitting inside. We left quietly and continued our walk up to the bandstand and the Radstua, then back down to Gronnegata. Tromso is full of old historic buildings but the Library in Gronnegata is an important modern building. Hearing bells we passed the Sparebank building and headed directly towards the second Tromso cathedral. The Tromso cathedral of the Luthern church of Norway dates from 1861 and is Norway’s only wooden cathedral. There has been a church on the site since 1252 and the present building is in Gothic Revival style. Again there was a service at 1100 and the doors were open beforehand. Norwegian people dress to go to church and the men all had dark suits and the women wore the traditional colourful Bunad national costume. For music, the cathedral has a historic Claus Jensen organ made in 1863 which is linked to the new Muhleisen organ installed in 2017. A park and cemetery surround the cathedral.

Walking along the waterfront we passed the MS Polarstar. She was built in 1948 for seal hunting and now offers day trips along the fjords. Further along there is the covered dry dock of the MS Polstjerna, another historic sealing ship, built in 1949 and owned by the Arctic Society. In front of the dry dock is a memorial to Helmer Hanssen commemorates his three expeditions with Roald Amundsen which discovered the northwest passage, the northeast passage and reached the southpole. It was now after 1100 and the Cunard tour buses were arriving at the Polaria Centre. It is the national centre for research about the polar regions and we looked at marine life and the Seal Pool before joining “Cunard Bus Number 2” to watch the video about Svalbard. Back at the marine displays, which include a touch pool, the seals continued to repeat their swims around their pool. Tours came and went. The next video was about the Northern Lights and we joined “Cunard Bus Number 4”. We were lucky that being independent travellers we had time to see both videos. There is an excellent shop here where we bought a chopping board with an image of the northern lights. Facing the modern building of Polaria on a rise in a large park was a large old house : the Art Gallery Tromso Kunstforenig. There was a group of colourful houses on the road behind it.

One side of the park housed the Mack Brewery. Established in 1877, it is the city’s oldest microbrewery. Unfortunately its shop and the brewery tap in Storgata are closed on Sunday. Passing Tromso cathedral, now closed, the Art Museum was open. The weather was too good to spend time looking at local arts and crafts and we had decided to cross the Tromso bridge and see the Arctic cathedral again. First we joined the waterfront and passed the Polar Museum, also closed, next to the Skansen. It is possible to catch a bus 20 or 28 from the city which crosses the bridge but we prefer to walk.

The Tromso bridge has a system which separated the pedestrians from cyclists and our path was on the town side; the cyclists were on the side with a view of the Queen Elizabeth. Built in 1965 and designed by Jan Inge Hovig, the Arctic cathedral design represents the shape of a Sami tent and the iciness of a glacier. The large stained glass triangular window on the east wall was by Victor Sparre and depicts the Second Coming of Christ – the stained glass is 2 inches thick and weighs many tons. Near the altar there is now a large circular candle holder as well as the silver bowl and jug we admired on our previous visit. The walk back over the bridge seemed shorter and we were soon back at the Stortorget. After quickly admiring the MS Hermes II, built in 1917 and now working as a trip boat, we were soon back at the shuttle bus and there were just 4 of us for the trip back to the Queen Elizabeth.

Tromso was our first chance to see the Northern lights. So first a bit of history….and physics

The Aurora Borealis

The Northern lights, or Aurora Borealis, is a natural phenomenon caused by the interaction of the solar wind with the earths magnetic field and atmosphere. The basic principle has been known for many years but the details are still subject to much research and discussion. I have not found a good simple explanation anywhere so I have had a shot myself! What follows is simplistic, although, hopefully, not actually scientifically inaccurate.

The solar wind is a continuous, highly variable stream of plasma - high-speed electrically charged particles emitted by the sun. The temperature above the surface of the sun is millions of degrees Celsius at which temperature, collisions between gas molecules are frequent and explosive. Free electrons and protons are thrown from the sun's atmosphere by the rotation of the sun and escape through holes in the magnetic field contributing to the solar wind. The links between sunspot activity and the Aurora has been recognised for many centuries. The solar wind 'carries', along with the plasma, the magnetic field of the Sun.

As the solar wind reaches Earth, it encounters the magnetic 'shield' formed by Earth’s own magnetic field, deforming it by pushing it from the dayside and stretching it into a long tail on the night side. As the solar wind blows round towards the tail of Earth’s magnetosphere, the resulting pressure in the tail can divert some particles which follow the Earth’s magnetic field back to the polar regions to reach the atmosphere causing the night time aurora. The regions where the particles finally hit Earth’s atmosphere causing aurora are called the auroral ovals, which are located around the northern and southern geomagnetic poles.

The interaction of the the highly energetic particles in the the plasma excite primarily Oxygen and Nitrogen molecules which emit the light which we know as the Aurora Borealis or Northern lights not to forget the equivalent Southern hemisphere equivalents - the Aurora Australis. The most common auroral color, a pale yellowish-green, is produced by oxygen molecules located about 80 kms above the earth.

While the solar wind flow is continually, it is also constantly changing. These ever-changing conditions of the space environment are collectively referred to by the term space weather. Very slow and steady solar wind do not usually cause aurora to form, but either high speed streams or types of shock fronts caused by solar eruptions are needed. When there is an eruption in the Sun, it will take roughly 1-3 days for it to reach Earth. The larger the eruption in the Sun and resulting the disturbances in the solar wind the more it warps Earth’s magnetic field, causing the auroral ovals to expand, and the further south we can see the aurora. In this way the occurrence of aurora is closely tied to the level of solar activity. While there are constant changes in the level of solar activity, on a longer timescale the activity follows an 11-year cycle. The Aurora do not completely disappear even during low solar activity, and even now,in 2019, whilst we are close to the solar activity minimum there are still some spectacular auroral displays. Solar eruptions large enough to cause aurora can happen any time!

Depending on the disturbance in Earth’s magnetosphere, the auroras can be very faint or very bright, ranging from invisible to the human eye to even illuminating the ground below in shades of green. Most often auroras are seen as green bands familiar from popular photographs of northern lights. Sometimes there is red above the green, and sometimes there is purplish red below the green. The different colours are a result of the energy absorption by different chemical elements of the atmosphere at different altitudes. The most common colour green and the occasionally visible red above the green are both coming from two different excitation levels of oxygen atoms. The purplish colour below the green, however, is coming from nitrogen molecules. Because the auroras occur quite high in the atmosphere, generally extending from 80 kilometres to under rare conditions to as high as 640 kilometres above the earth's surface, the same auroral display can be seen over a large area on ground. Because they are above the clouds, one needs a cloudless sky to enjoy the show preferably in an area of low ambient lighting and low moon.

The activity is described by the Kp number system which is just a scale of geomagnetic activity and maps are produced from data from satellites such as NASA's ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer) which has been sitting at the L1 libration point 1.5 million from Earth since 1997 (and still has fuel for a few more years). Kp is not a figure which can be used to exactly predict probability of Auroral activity during an evening leave alone at an exact time. But linked with experience it can hint where auroras are visible and at what point of the kp scale they are visible. So we can plot a map and say for example, this place usually gets auroras when Kp6 level is met. In the case of Tromso and Narvik a Kp2 level is well worth a try but you may have a several hour stand in sub zero temperatures and see nothing or you may get a picture with your phone! Many of the best photographs have been taken in temperatures of -20 degrees C in the far North with sophisticated cameras.

I have said nothing about the shape, and speed of variations of Auroral displays which seems even less well understood. The whole process is an unstable interaction and one major constraint seems to be that a major contributor is an oxygen decay from an excited state via a 'forbidden' transition with a time-constant of tens of seconds and that is only if it is not quenched by other direct interactions (collisions) at lower levels where the atmosphere is more dense. The ever changing display is best photographed with shutter speeds of only a few seconds and preferably under 10 seconds.

I have found some spectacular video from space of the Northern Lights in the Earth from Space series which is currently accessible via the BBC iPlayer.

Photographing the Aurora

This brings us rather conveniently to the constraints for photographing the Aurora. You are photographing a very faint phenomena which may be at the limit of the eye or sometimes only visible on a photograph. You need a stable platform so you can get long exposures ie a tripod or some rest is essential as exposures of several seconds may be required. One must be able to have a Manual fixed focus set to infinity as autofocus needs plenty of light and will hunt. You must also turn off any automatic stabilisation as again it may go unstable with very low light. The lens needs to be wide open - say below f4.0 and the ISO (film speed equivalent) as high as possible without result being so grainy as to be useless - on modern cameras 800 ASA should be fine and up to 3200 ASA may help get a picture. You must use a remote control or use a timer to avoid disturbing the camera and to avoid vibration, even with a tripod. I would normally not state the obvious but having been repeatedly blinded by people who think a flash will help or, almost as bad a focus assist light - Turn Them Off and turn down the screen brightness.

Most compact cameras lack the sort of manual control required for good Auroral pictures but may have 'modes' such as 'night mode', 'low light' or even 'fireworks' which give you a chance under good conditions. Phones now have amazing cameras but little control but there are Apps which provide alternative camera interfaces which enable you exploit their full capabilities. I have the Open Camera App on my Android Samsung A6 which gives the ability to select manual or infinite focus, exposure, aperture and ISO (film speed equivalent) which gets one into the right range for a backup camera. I am separately writing up more about Camera Apps for Android. There are also Apps to allow you to turn down the screen brightness to much lower levels than normally available so you maintain your night vision.

You will see that stars are clearly visible on most Aurora photographs A good test is to see if you can get a set up which enables you to get a clear picture of the star field. I could see far more stars than with my naked eye on a picture using a timer and 4 seconds exposure, f3.5, ISO 400 with Manual focus set to infinity and wide angle (Autofocus off, AF assist off and ISO extended in the menus) on my Panasonic Lumix DMC TZ80, an up-market compact camera even on an evening with a full moon and high ambient lighting whilst only using a very basic free tripod. One last point is that camera and phone batteries lose capacity rapidly as you approach zero centigrade so keep them warm but also watch out for condensation!

On board is not the best place for viewing the Northern Lights because it really needs to be somewhere which is dark and the ship has too many lights and was berthed in a big city. Nevertheless we went out to Deck 9 aft after dinner. Commentary was provided from our expert speaker from 2030 onwards but without success. Later we heard that many people who went on tours saw nothing, but our neighbours in the restaurant went out independently into the countryside and caught a glimpse of the famous green lights. Everyone hoped there would be better sightings in the next port, Narvik.

The story continues at Narvik in Norway

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Content revised: 30th November, 2019