No more drawer displays from Rovaniemi – this is from the early morning of last Saturday, 20 November!
On the eve of action the sky cleared up soon after midday, but wind remained strong. I kept checking the weather station graphs and the habit of the power plant plume that is visible from my window. At around 3 am the signs were such that it was better to go.
When I arrived to the ski center on the other side of Ounasvaara, the action was already on: nice tangent arcs above the bright slope and ski jump floodlights. But the stuff was just hanging around the guns, no good for the spotlight there because of the excess light pollution.
So I waited. At around 5 am the diamond dust took finally off, reaching towards the city. I followed, getting stoked by the lower tangent arcs that swept by under each streetlight as I drove. About a halfway to the city center I took off from the main road and went to a place for small boats by the river.
Because of the tight space there I had to place the lamp pretty close to the camera. It is about 9 degrees below the horizon. The lamp is the same old 75W HID that I used four years ago. I have another light with very tight beam that I hope to try soon.
A HaloPoint simulation is included. As usual, I was not able to get it right. Once some detail got perfected, another worsened. That's how it goes. The sub-120 parhelia are rather weak in the photo, but when I viewed them from the side of the beam, they were quite striking. I think in the center of the beam where the camera was, a visual would have been impossible.
