It was one of the largest outbreaks - but in Stockholm city - it wasn't that majestic, really - because it quyickly developed into a green haze which covered the entire sky, featureless. The Auroral Ovale was so large over the Northern Hemisphere, that the real activity happened SOUTH of Scandinavia, in unusual southern places like Italy, Spain, Florida, Arizona, etc.
But the beginning was simply awesome - showing beautiful curtains of pink and green. At times the largest and brightest features where seen at the south horizon, where Mars was shining brightly against the sky. (See photo above). It felt weird, to see the Aurora in the South... where you normally only see it in the north.
20 Nov 2003
Luckily, in Nov 2003, i had a better camera
called Canon EOS 10D, which was considerably better at higher ISO around 800, compared to the very noisy Canon D30, that when you went up to ISO 400 combined with longer exposure times (10 seconds), lots of noise would appear in the images. And the older Kodak DC4800 camera (i bought in Oct 2000), which delightfully had a wider 28mm ƒ 2.8 lens - but often resulted into noisy images. Well, that didn't keep me from taking images. I sprayed with that camera everywhere, at all times. And had so much fun !!!
The EOS 10D i got in 2003 - had now a 6 MP APS-C sensor, handled the aspect of higher ISO as well llonger exposure times better. Therefore the images of an Auroral outbreak got better, too. At least from a technical point of view.
I also had a very bright wideangle lens - the Sigma EX 20 mm ƒ1.8 which on a 1.6x sensor resulted into a perspective / focal length of 30 mm. That too helped me to get some nicer shots of the ongoing Auroras. Now the Sigma 20/1.8 wasn't a sharpness champion really, but the bad corners where not visible, due to that the sensor was a lot smaller compared to fullframe.
Perry
I remember that I called Perry in full excitement, to get home quickly as fast as he could (it was at the end of his duty for the day, at the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm). He did actually come relatively quickly - something like a half hour - meeting me at the park near the place where we lived in Enskede. There it was a lot darker, with less interference from strong street lights. Perfect for Auroral observations. After all - in the beginning, it was an amazing sight !
So, there we stood and watched the aurora. Goofy me as always, making some photo experiments with him in it *grin* It was a time, where illusions seemed so real, convincing and beautiful.
Until they gradually started to fall apart not unlike a slow motion movie, in which illusionary pieces got replaced with a darker reality. Always present in the background, but never outspoken and very difficult to pinpoint.
Like a thief at night, with activities and plans hidden from sunlight - while during daylight preserving sort of harmless gentle appearances. Funny business, if you ask me.
Boy, did I love that guy. No doubt what so ever.
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