Astronomy Camp at AIS 2011

Well, this is the first blog post that I'm publishing after 2 months. I'm really sorry about the absence of updates and news as i was really busy with University academics and AIESEC work. This post is about the Astronomy camp that we conducted for the Asian International School (AIS) last 18th of March

Astronomy Camp - March 2011 at University of Colombo

I'm now gonna blog about an event that we had in our University almost 2 months back. I'm really sorry guys for dragging this such longer due to the busy schedule I've been undergoing last few months due to various reasons. Hope you don't mind me sharing in so late. Anyway here it is...

Watch Total Solar Eclipse 11th July 2010 Live Streaming from EclipseBlog

The most awaited total solar eclipse of the year 2010 is about to take place in less than next 20 hours from now. There have been a lot of groups/ individuals flocked at South Pacific islands and Chilean territories right now waiting for the eclipse to take place.

IYA2009 Commemorative Coins Issued by Many Countries Worldwide

As the title of this post hints, there were lot of countries involved in this worldwide celebration during 2009, which was the 400th anniversary of both the discovery of telescope for astronomical observation by Galileo Galilei and the publication of “Astronomia Nova” by Johannes Kepler. These were the reasons which were prominent in specifying 2009 as the IYA.

A Tribute to Fiami the author of The Lives of Galileo

I have already made a post about Fiami, and his great gift that I received during the Christmas season. I got many great feedback on that and even my friends wanted to read it, as none of them had the comic book with them, So I thought of doing a youtube video featuring Fiami

The Blog Has Moved !

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

My visit to Iceland on lookout for Northern Lights aka Aurora Borealis

I'm creating this blog post to share some of the reflections of my visit to Iceland last month (February 2013). In fact the main reason behind my visit to Iceland was to see the northern lights, aka aurora borealis. Ever since I'd heard of them and seen them in pictures and internet with breathtaking time lapses, I developed an utter desire to see them in reality.

Beyond doubt Scandinavia is the place to be, but you have to make sure you're within a decent latitude to see this magical phenomenon. Far north in Norway or Sweden , Finnish Lapland or distant Iceland would be potential candidates for your location if you're close to Europe. As for me I bailed out Norway and Sweden merely because I'd been there before, although it was not the far north where I was before, during my first trip in Europe. This latest being the second, I chose Iceland as my target, inspired by many facts about amazing nature, sagas, old Norse, Eyjafjallajökull, the best horses and Reykjavik night life in addition to the mere ambition of spotting the northern lights. Additionally the Icelandic forecast for this winter was quite promising too.

During my arrival in Reykjavik it was not the best time to see northern lights from there whereas the very northern-most capital of the world is located in Southwest of the giant island, not the best at least per meteorological reports available at http://en.vedur.is/weather/forecasts/aurora/. However owing to random circumstances with spontaneous occurrences I managed to get in touch with a Finnish couple, rent a jeep and drive to Akureyri, a town located in Iceland with more hopes for those irresistible natural flashes over the skies.

The first night in Akureyri had to be given-up due to the thick cloud cover and even the people who'd been taken out by those expensive tour operators had no luck the entire midnight. As for the next day I had already checked Vedur.is site and we in Akureyri had an activity of 1 in the aurora forecast whose activity is given in the range of 0 through 9. Thus with desperate hopes with minimal chances of aurora borealis we found ourselves chatting in a bar with some Erasmus students and locals, later that evening. For them who had been witnessing this ongoing extravaganza for many many times, just another show of northern lights was nothing that could get them out of their chairs. Actually they'd got bored seeing them too many times that it was nothing special for them.

However a while later we were coming out of the bar to head back to our hostel, when we began to realize that the magic is happening. Voila !! YES, it was northern lights. Gleaming beams of greenly and yellowish lights were all over the skies, they were drifting across the skies like fast-moving torrents. Some lasted for a longer duration and some disappeared quickly leaving no traces whatsoever about their being. But above all, that was a stunning and a spectacular show of northern lights. One of the amazing days of my life that I would never forget. I was really happy that the mother nature had favored us and we could see the northern lights.







Meantime we hurried to our jeep and went a bit up towards mountains to avoid the pollution-lit town to get a better view and some pictures of course. We didn't have a tripod and pictures were taken with my friend Tuomas's camera. The lack of the tripod is clearly reflected in the pictures, but nevertheless I wanted to share them and I hope you will enjoy them ! Let me know what you think.

Most importantly don't miss a chance to visit this amazing volcanic island with its unparalleled natural aestheticism !!