September 9-10 Monday-Tuesday
For the first time since leaving Nome and sailing through the Bering Strait, we are south of the Arctic Circle.
We’re spending two days at sea crossing the Labrador Sea as we sail south towards Red Bay in Labrador.
This body of water is also known as Iceberg Alley, as the icebergs emerging from the Ilulissat icefjord are carried south by ocean currents. It’s believed that the iceberg which sank the Titanic came from Ilulissat.
We had a cabin announcement around midnight that the aurora borealis was faintly visible but would probably be getting brighter. So we threw layers over pajamas, grabbed hats and gloves and headed up to the top deck.
What started out as a gray vertical strip on one side of the ship gradually grew into a wide arc over the ship and down the other side. The lights got more intense as new strips materialized, and stretched into folds like drapes, trailing down towards the horizon like big fireworks. I could see very little color with the naked eye, but the iPhone did a great job with 3 second exposure.
These pictures are in chronological order, taken over an hour.
This was not an exceptionally active aurora, with a KP index of 2.5-3. But we’re so far north that cameras could capture a decent show. The index ranges from 0-9. A KP score of 5-6 can be seen in Canada under good conditions. The exceptional solar storm that generated an aurora visible across the United States was an 8-9.
There’s a free app called Aurora that shows the KP index score in your current location, as well as a map showing where the aurora has the best chance of being seen (the location is constantly moving around the globe, from east to west). For most of our time in the Northwest Passage, we were actually too far north to see the northern lights!
The colors of the aurora are created by different atmospheric gases. Oxygen creates a green glow, while nitrogen glows blue and purple. Combinations of gases create colors in between.
There’s a scientific explanation for the display, but it still seems pretty magical. We were all so excited and happy. What an unexpected treat!
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