Northern Lights over Sweden

Northern Lights over Sweden, originally uploaded by Billvision.

This was shot in Juoksengi, Sweden, where the Swedish/Finnish border and the Arctic Circle cross. There was a 20 minute break in the clouds, and I was lucky enough to notice and run outside. It was just after 7pm, but up here the sun set at 2pm so it was very dark.

I used a Nikon D40 on a tripod, set to Aperture Priority. It took about 14 shots about 30 minutes in a foot of snow to finally find a setting that worked! The shutter stayed open for about 30 seconds on all of these photos.

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