The centerpiece of this year’s first trip is to view the Aurora Borealis. This has been at the top of our ‘must see’ list for many years.

Our Adventure to Norway and Ireland

I’ve had an interest in space, astronomy, and celestial bodies from the time I was about 10 years old. I tried building a very crude reflective telescope, but never got it to work properly. I read every science fiction book I could find in the local library. We are talking about the 1950’s, when little was known about the Northern Lights, other than a few photographs. I had a View Master with a reel that included amazing Northern Lights images. My interest has not waned over the years.

So, what is the Aurora Borealis? The first ‘recorded’ sighting occurred in New England in 1719, and created alarm and fear that the end of the world was imminent. It was obviously not the first time they were seen. Pierre Gassendi, an astronomer, named the lights Aurora Borealis in 1621. While Europeans who witnessed the events during the Middle Ages, believed they were a warning from god that bad things were to come. By the end of 18th century, interpretation of sightings moved to one of curiosity and delight.

In 1960, NASA discovered these lights were the result of collisions between electrically charged particles [electrons, protons] with gases such as nitrogen and oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere. These electrons and protons originated from the surface of our sun as a result of solar flares or large explosions at the surface. One can observe these near-surface explosions through a telescope. The flares eject a mantle of electrons, ions, and protons into space. The emissions create a solar wind that ‘blows’ into space. A day or two after an event, particles approach Earth. Most are deflected by the Earth’s magnetic field. However, the magnetic field [shield] is weakest near the north and south magnetic poles. Hence the charged particles get funneled into these ‘drains’ and allow the particles to reach our atmosphere containing various gases – oxygen, nitrogen. This generally occurs at an altitude of 50-400 miles. As the particles collide with the gases, energy is released as the particle moves to a lower energy level. This ‘released energy’ is realized in visible light – the Northern Lights.

By the way, the same phenomenon occurs at the South Magnetic Pole but is named Borealis Australis. The reduced intensity of the lights and the difficulty of accessibility make them less interesting to study. To make the point, we met a Cambridge University scientist, Bernard Stonehouse, a few years ago during a trip to Antarctica. Even though he spent most of his career studying Antarctica [he refers to himself as an ‘ice man’], he never mentioned the Borealis Australis in either his lectures or his book. I suppose that he just kept his head down… not looking up to notice the wondrous lights.

The 1960 discovery initiated research projects throughout the scientific community and continues to this day in mankind’s quest to understand the phenomena. One of the scientific centers for this research was at the University of Utah. The University established an Upper Air Research Department, funded by the US Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratory and the National Science Foundation, with a mission to study this near-space area. It was staffed with about 25 faculty members, graduate students, and undergraduate students.

I was extremely fortunate to earn my way through the University of Utah engineering program by working in the Upper Air Research Department. One of the areas of focus was the Aurora Borealis. I was a member of a small team that designed and built an instrument package that would be launched into the Aurora Borealis on board an Aerobee sounding rocket. The purpose was to measure the total energy deposition in the iono-sphere from these particle fluxes. To achieve this, we designed and built a scintillator instrument containing a crystal wafer as the detector. As each particle would hit the crystal wafer, the crystal would emit a flash or spark. A photomultiplier tube would amplify these ‘hits’ so they could be easily measured, and recorded. Hence it could measure the intensity and volume of the bombardment onto the earth’s atmosphere. By sending the rockets to different altitudes, we could measure the intensity as a function of altitude and thereby understand the lifecycle of solar winds and resultant color, size, and duration of the lights. The design and construction of this scintillator became the subject of my thesis.

So where is the best place to see the Aurora Borealis – both in terms of probability and intensity? The easy answer is: As close as you can get to the magnetic pole. First, get to the highest latitude possible. As a reference, the Arctic Circle is at about 66 degrees north; Fairbanks, Alaska is at 64 degrees north; Iceland is at 65 degrees North. Norway offers some of the best candidate locations, which are relatively easy to access. When searching on the web, the islands of Svalbard, Norway at 74 to 81 degrees North are recommended as the best places to view the Northern Lights. However, getting there is not straight forward, and once there, there is nothing of note to see or to do other than to watch the lights. Since the magnetic pole wanders over time, it is currently moving toward Northern Siberia at a rate of more than 50 km/year, reinforcing the desirability of Norway as a base. Given all of that, we opted for a location furthest North on Norway’s mainland… the little town of Kirkenes at 69 degrees North, and about 20 km from the Russian border. That will be our first major stop on the trip.

We will spend two days in Kirkenes, hoping to see the phenomena. Next we will board a coastal ferry ship and travel down the Western coast to Bergen, and then on to Oslo via rail. We will have opportunities to see the Northern Lights throughout the voyage. For our second week over the pond, we had originally wanted to return to St. Petersburg, Russia and experience the white, snowy, beauty of St. Petersburg. Our thought was to have a Dr. Zhivago moment of ‘Yuri’ and ‘Lara’ riding in a troika [carriage] drawn by a team of three horses, to a snow covered dacha in the countryside, wearing fur hats and sable coats, to enjoy an evening of caviar and vodka in front of a roaring fire. Can’t you just hear Lara’s Theme playing in the background?

Hit ‘DELETE’ to that idea. In order to enter Russia, a visa is required. It soon became clear that Russia is not encouraging tourism. The list of information we were required to provide, and the visa fee, along with the cost of an expert to herd us though the process, made it far too painful.

In its place, we decided to look for a European location, which is relatively close to Norway, a place neither had visited, but had been on our list of destinations we wanted to see. And the answer is: Ireland! Over the years, we had planned to see Ireland on at least six separate occasions, either for business or to experience the beauty and culture. Somehow these plans never came to fruition. So this is the perfect time! We’ll start in Dublin and then meander west and south to Cork, and the western coast where we’ll focus on the Dingle peninsula and its variety of archaeological monuments. We can’t wait to experience the ocean smashing into the cliffs, and the refuge of many pubs with warmth, comfort food, and Irish whiskey, of course.

Wheels-up for our transatlantic flight is on Wednesday, February 10th.

Either: Vi ses der! Or: Feicfidh mé ann thú!