Auroras
Tromsø in Norway is certainly the best and most accessible place to watch auroras in Scandinavia. I have been there four times, from December to March, and I saw auroras every nights!
The hunt for auroras
After couple of trips in the artic circle to hunt for auroras, we know now how to best proceed. First, you need to be as far up north as feasible. Tromsø and Alta are probably the best choices in Scandinavia as they are located on the corona of aurora activity. Then, the weather needs to be without too much clouds, which again is often the case when you go far north and enter the polar Hadley cell. In addition, better to be there when it not full moon as the auroras are very sensitive to lights in the environment.
Once this is set, check the aurora activity forecast at the Aurora Service Europe website. On their forecast page, you see in realtime the likelihood of watching auroras if the weather permits.
Watching auroras in Tromsø
The first evening, we went to Kaldfjord, on a parking along the coastal road. The sky remained quite cloudy and we could only spot very fainted auroras towards the northwest. The (bad) picture below is only interesting as you can see a quite dark blue aurora below the green one, a type I had never seen before.
On the second evening, we went up the mountain to Finnvikvatnet, a frozen lake on Kvaløysletta. We saw nice auroras until midnight.
On the second evening, we went up the mountain to Finnvikvatnet, a frozen lake on Kvaløysletta. We saw nice auroras until midnight.
Finally, for our third and last evening, we went to Tønvik. The temperature dropped dramatically, and again we we happy to watch very scenic auroras.
Taking pictures of auroras
As for taking pictures of auroras, in fact, it is quite straight forward. You need a good tripod, quite stable, to avoid that the wind may make it move. This is what happened to me for the first aurora picture above which is not very sharp. Then, use the widest angle lens that you have or zoom out to the widest angle. Then, put the camera in manual mode, the ISO around 640 to minimise noise, the aperture as low as you can (2.8 for me), and disable the autofocus while setting the focus to infinity. I started with a 30 second exposure, which produced a picture over-burnt. I then decreased the speed to 15", which gave a perfect result. Don't forget to use the timer to take the picture, as pressing on the button of the camera may make it move. With a few trial and errors, most cameras could do a pretty good job even in such challenging situation.
For taking picture of people at the same time as auroras, set the flash on while keeping the long exposure time. I decreased the strength of the flash by 2 levels to avoid giving the impression of an artificial picture.