Northern Lights in Estonia is not a very rare sight by itself, it's a northern country but usually, they are faint and not often overhead but on the horizon. Two days ago it was a much more different scenario and I saw something amazing.
I got a notification on my phone that aurora can be visible to see, according to the carts my chances were quite good so I decided to drive to the Türisalu cliff that is facing straight to the north. At first, when I arrived the sky was mostly cloudy but I could already see some northern lights through that.
According to the model, clouds should mostly clear out soon so I waited and it happened. Northern lights were amazing and all visible by the naked eye.
The wind was really strong and I had to hold the tripod during pictures because it was shaking it.
The time was after midnight and my camera's battery died. I thought that I had gotten good pictures and decided to leave after 2 hours of being there. Little did I know that northern lights were about to get insane suddenly.
I started to pack up my tripod when I saw a very bright stripe that appeared in the sky, instantly I was euphoric. I took out the battery and started to warm and rub it, it usually boots up the camera for a sec after that. When I was dealing with the battery I saw all of the skies above me suddenly lit up with bright aurora and they were all dancing fast.
I put the battery back in and the camera booted up.
What the hell, I mean. I saw this insane sight I saw in Iceland, I was mentally fully unprepared for it. You can also see the red color that was visible to the naked eye.
My camera died again, so I repeated the rubbing and warming. After a minute I managed to boot up the camera again and took more shots of this gorgeous sight.
The lights were changing really fast and this dancing truly amazed me, it was magical.
After that my camera died completely and rubbing didn't help anymore. For a while I just watched the lights dance above me when finally the clouds cover the area. I started to drive back home and all the way I could see bright auroral stripes through the holes in the clouds. It was absolutely amazing experience.
Northern lights of this scale rarely happen in Estonia so I was really lucky to see it. Let's hope the next time isn't too far away. Solar maximum is slowly approaching the solar storm should get stronger by the years, in theory at least.
