Northern Lights from Ship

Hi.Have a question for all and hope it does not sound to daft.We are booked on Aurora Nov 19 with a stop over in Tromso-we dock at 8am and depart next morning at 2.30 am.

This does not give us enough time for an evening chase to see the lights-can you get a view when on board the ship or during sailaway-I know it depends on weather-has any one been lucky enough to see them.Thanks.

Hi.Have a question for all and hope it does not sound to daft.We are booked on Aurora Nov 19 with a stop over in Tromso-we dock at 8am and depart next morning at 2.30 am.

This does not give us enough time for an evening chase to see the lights-can you get a view when on board the ship or during sailaway-I know it depends on weather-has any one been lucky enough to see them.Thanks.

We did that cruise last November and we had a fantastic time and yes we did see the lights !! :D

BTW, don't worry, your question doesn't sound daft.:)

Tromso is quite large with lots of things to see and do but your next port of call should be Alta and you will have 2 nights there. Alta is small and there is very little to do, so my advice would be to arrange for any excursions, Hunting The Northern Lights, Husky Sledding etc in Alta. We booked our own private excursions rather than with P&O.

It is possible to see the lights from the ship but if they do appear you get a much better showing if there is no light pollution.

We were taken to a remote location by the side of a frozen lake where we had a fantastic display, but obviously that's not guaranteed.

Also, the shuttle buses stop around 11.30pm but if you are on a private excursion they will take you back to the ship. I think we got back on board some time after 2.00 am.

And remember to pack the thermal underwear :).

On a practical note these little hand warmers that you just crack and they heat up are also ideal for additional heat.

We saw them from the ship on Oriana on March 1st in Alta, where we had two nights. :)

Don't worry about the times of departure of the ship - timings are all geared to helping you get the most opportunity to view the Lights and dining times are all very flexible when in those ports so you can do the evening excursions.

We went on one of the first cruises to see the Northern Lights with P&O but was in March. As you say there is no guarantee to see the lights wherever you are but when we went there was no view of the lights from the ship and of the 2 nights in Alta the first night was a spectacular view whilst on P&O excursion but second night was nothing due to cloud. It is a gamble if you book the excursion, and it isnt cheap, and you managed to see the lights from the ship you would think it is money wasted. But if you saw nothing and heard that those on the excursion had a good viewing then you would be very disappointed. Only you can decide which step to take but all I can say that the viewing we saw on the P&O excursion was mind blowing and a memory never to forget.

We found the cruise to be a totally different experience (in a very good way) to what we were used to.

For example watching the crew clearing the ice and snow from the exposed upper decks is something you don't normally see.

Also, as said the dining arrangements are flexible so we found ourselves dining at different times to suit whatever was going on at the time.

The Captain, (our Captain was the excellent Neil Turnbull) will announce any interesting bits of information during the cruise, like when you cross over into the Artic Circle, any sightings of the Northern lights and any whales that may be close by.

We did a 'Norther Lights' cruise in Oriana last year. We paid for the excursion the first night in Alta and saw nothing but cloud. We got got sightings from the ship the next day and an excellent light display on our way back down the Norwegian coast afterwards.

We've seen the Northern Lights from a ship in Iceland and it was amazing. We used a website that gave you the likelihood at a given time and date and it was spot on

My wife and I were also on Oriana in March and saw the Lights on consecutive evenings from the ship in Alta (ditto 2016 too). I've always taken the view that if the Lights are strong, you'll see them from the ship so long as you can find a deck with the lights dimmed. The proof of the pudding can be found on my Flickr account here.

You can get quite a good view from the ship when the lights appear, BUT there is a lot of light pollution caused by the ship and that does lessen the experience as your eyes don’t fully ‘dark adjust’. They will not turn the deck lights off due to the dreaded health and safety.

We went in March and I went on the P&O tour to a sports field, still in Alta, and my wife watched from the ship. Even though we were in the same town, the spectacle from the darkened field was far superior to the view from the ship just a few miles away.

Also, don’t be fooled by all the photos you see of the Northern Lights. Camera lenses pick out the colour, especially green, in a way that the human eye doesn’t and massively amplify it. In very good displays (which we had for three nights in a row due to a major solar flare) you can see pale green and sometimes red, but nothing whatsoever like you see in the photos. It is an experience that we will never forget but don’t expect to see them to the intensity that you see in the photos and then you won’t be disappointed. The predominant colour to the human eye is white.

My wife and I were also on Oriana in March and saw the Lights on consecutive evenings from the ship in Alta (ditto 2016 too). I've always taken the view that if the Lights are strong, you'll see them from the ship so long as you can find a deck with the lights dimmed. The proof of the pudding can be found on my Flickr account here.

Excellent photos, brings back memories of our cruise last November.:D

I think you will agree that you need a good camera (expensive) with all the essential manual settings to get good photos of the northern lights.

We had to rely on the photographs that our guides took as our camera although good was not up to the job.

My wife and I were also on Oriana in March and saw the Lights on consecutive evenings from the ship in Alta (ditto 2016 too). I've always taken the view that if the Lights are strong, you'll see them from the ship so long as you can find a deck with the lights dimmed. The proof of the pudding can be found on my Flickr account here.

Gorgeous photos; thanks for sharing.

Just a couple of many photos taken by our guides, but they do show a true representation of what we actually saw.

We were taken out to a remote frozen lake location with no light pollution and a clear moon free starry night.

We had a truly fantastic show including the elusive moving/shimmering curtain effects and multi colours.

A few more. !! :)

A few more. !! :)

 

 

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I would say that the last one of those is a very good depiction of the strength of colour that the human eye picks out. As I said before, the vivid bright green that you see in all the pictures that people take (including mine) is magnified by the camera lense. In the excitement of it all and due to the spectacular shots that you can capture with a good camera, people have a selective memory about what they actually saw. The human eye does pick out the structure, shape and motion of the lights and if asked what colour you are seeing you would often say green and, when very intense, red, but it’s nothing like the intensity of colour that you see in photos. Word of warning, camera phones are pretty useless at capturing the lights. You need a good camera and tripod. There is an app that you can get for an iPhone and I tried it but, once again, it exaggerated the strength of colour so much that it wasn’t an accurate depiction of what we saw. I have to say though that even when white, which is most of the time, the Northern Lights are truly ‘out of this World’. It had been on our bucket list for decades and we were very lucky to have a strong display.

I would say that the last one of those is a very good depiction of the strength of colour that the human eye picks out. As I said before, the vivid bright green that you see in all the pictures that people take (including mine) is magnified by the camera lense. In the excitement of it all and due to the spectacular shots that you can capture with a good camera, people have a selective memory about what they actually saw. The human eye does pick out the structure, shape and motion of the lights and if asked what colour you are seeing you would often say green and, when very intense, red, but it’s nothing like the intensity of colour that you see in photos. Word of warning, camera phones are pretty useless at capturing the lights. You need a good camera and tripod. There is an app that you can get for an iPhone and I tried it but, once again, it exaggerated the strength of colour so much that it wasn’t an accurate depiction of what we saw. I have to say though that even when white, which is most of the time, the Northern Lights are truly ‘out of this World’. It had been on our bucket list for decades and we were very lucky to have a strong display.

I agree that the last picture is more typical of what you get to see but I have to be honest and say that for us things got a lot more intense later in the evening.

As you say normally you get to see a pale green cloud like formation moving horizontally across the sky but for us later in the evening we were treated to an intense display so much so that even our guides got over excited. They even featured that nights display on their Facebook page and said that it was one of the best displays they had seen in a long time and commented that it is quite a rare occurrence to see them that strong. As the other photos show, later we had vertical rods of reds, orange, and purple light coming down from the sky vertically above our heads and moving and rippling, very impressive. Also, they appear to be blurred but this is due to the long exposure time required to take the picture and to the naked eye they appeared sharper. As you know you are not guaranteed to see them and even if you do they will vary in intensity, length of time and the way they appear in the sky. As you say it is possible to see them from the ship but you get a much better display on land and away from any light pollution, but of course this is somewhat of a gamble and comes at a cost.

We did the Oriana cruise a couple of years ago. We did see the lights from the ship, but as others have said, even the ship itself causes light pollution. You will maximize your chances by being out on deck (or a balcony) away from artificial light sources. Even stepping away from the lit areas of deck into shadow can make a difference. We saw people standing in brightly lit bars, looking out of the window, and wondering why they could not see anything.

We also did one of the trips in Alta, which will take you further from light pollution. we were very lucky and saw a spectacular display. In short, while you can see the lights from the ship (with luck), our experience was that the further you got from artificial light, the better your chances.

The display and performance that we saw onboard Oriana in Alta on March 1, 2017 was truly amazing.... vibrant colours and swirls and vortices, dashing around the ship and moving from side to side.

They were truly dancing and far from white in colour. It was an overwhelming experience. We did not have the time to stay put and focus the camera as we would have missed the experience itself. That was no problem as that performance is embedded in our memories for life. It was awesome.

Hi.Have a question for all and hope it does not sound to daft.We are booked on Aurora Nov 19 with a stop over in Tromso-we dock at 8am and depart next morning at 2.30 am.

This does not give us enough time for an evening chase to see the lights-can you get a view when on board the ship or during sailaway-I know it depends on weather-has any one been lucky enough to see them.Thanks.

Normally cruise ships are lit up similar to Blackpool front at the height of the season. I was lucky to see them when I was on a round trip on board Hurtigruten., but even then the captain made a special effort and douced the deck lights.

On 6/26/2018 at 4:57 PM, Scriv said:

The display and performance that we saw onboard Oriana in Alta on March 1, 2017 was truly amazing.... vibrant colours and swirls and vortices, dashing around the ship and moving from side to side.

They were truly dancing and far from white in colour. It was an overwhelming experience. We did not have the time to stay put and focus the camera as we would have missed the experience itself. That was no problem as that performance is embedded in our memories for life. It was awesome.

We were on this cruise too (waves to Scriv). We paid a fortune for the trip the day before and saw nothing other than cloud, then we got this wonderful light show for free the next evening. People even got decent images from 'point and press' cameras, I didn't even try cos I thought it would be no good.

Another thing to note is that many (most) of the moving images seen on-line are actually time lapse photos, it is unusual for the lights to move as much, or as quickly, as these suggest. Although, as Sriv says, we were incredibly lucky to see some actual 'dancing' 🙂

On 6/24/2018 at 8:30 PM, jimgri said:

My wife and I were also on Oriana in March and saw the Lights on consecutive evenings from the ship in Alta (ditto 2016 too). I've always taken the view that if the Lights are strong, you'll see them from the ship so long as you can find a deck with the lights dimmed. The proof of the pudding can be found on my Flickr account here.

What camera and set up do you use to take your photographs?  

They really are very nice indeed.

My advice is if the weather's good don't wait until Tromsø to start looking. I was on Oriana's "ill fated" late March cruise this year when the best and only night we saw the lights was the night before we arrived in Tromsø heading north. You have a good chance of catching them once you're north Trondheim anyway and the best time is at sea when your away from other light pollution etc. Here's a link to my real time video I got from that night https://youtu.be/c81jDy4B1bE . It's a bit shaky but it was blowing a gale with snowstorms passing through.

Thanks for posting that real time video.

You were very lucky to have such a good show from the ship and it confirms that you can get the moving and shimmering effects as your video shows.

As you can see from my previous posts in this thread we were also very lucky and had a fantastic show when we visited last November.

On a technical note are you able to give me the Make Model of the video camera used for that footage and did you have manual settings. Not many non pro video cameras would be sensitive enough to capture that amount of low light detail.

29 minutes ago, P-L-B said:

Thanks for posting that real time video.

 

You were very lucky to have such a good show from the ship and it confirms that you can get the moving and shimmering effects as your video shows.

 

As you can see from my previous posts in this thread we were also very lucky and had a fantastic show when we visited last November.

 

On a technical note are you able to give me the Make Model of the video camera used for that footage and did you have manual settings. Not many non pro video cameras would be sensitive enough to capture that amount of low light detail.

Hi P-L-B

Yes, I used a Canon Legria HF G40 to capture that video and was surprised how much it picked up. It was the first time I’d tried it in those conditions too. I had it in full manual with the widest aperture, shutter speed of 1/12 sec (it goes down to 1/6 sec but no good when it’s hand held) and the gain control was at maximum.

As I said this was really the only night we saw them as from then on in Tromsø and Alta it was either snowing or absolutely zero auroral activity even when it cleared.

But don’t let that put you off, it was still an unforgettable experience. I’ve even booked to go back in Feb 2020 on Aurora for round 2.

On 10/18/2018 at 7:05 PM, FiftyOnePlus said:

What camera and set up do you use to take your photographs?  

They really are very nice indeed.

Hi FiftyOnePlus, Thanks for the kind feedback. I use a mirrorless Fujifilm camera, namely the X-E2. Most of the Northern Lights photos were taken with a very wide angle (12.0 mm) manual focus Samyang lens, wide open at f/2.0 and focused to infinity. ISO was set at 250 with exposures ranging from 20-30 seconds. Needless to say, a tripod was essential. All of the photos were processed afterwards using Adobe Lightroom to bring out the colours that the natural eye doesn't always see.