A month from today we'll arrive inside the Arctic Circle, in Finnish Lapland.
Maps suggest our chosen village of Saariselka is a little more than 200 kilometers from the Arctic Sea at the Norwegian coast and maybe about 300 k from Murmansk, Russia.
The little village calls itself the northernmost ski resort in the world, but in Lapland, beware the use of the term "ski resort," at least in the sense of Alpine or Rockies destinations. Lapland is a land of much more gentle topography, and it appears the highest point around Saariselka is Kaunispaa hill, at 437 meters.
We'll be up that way just days after the winter solstice to experience the Arctic night (At 67.333 degrees north latitude, Saariselka sits about a degree above the Arctic Circle) and to try to photograph the aurora borealis, so I've been doing my diligence, and to tell the truth, I can't find much in the way of aurora tutorials that tell much beyond the obvious: Dress warmly, use a tripod, try longer exposures, watch your histogram, bring extra batteries.
We'll have much more in a month or so.
Here are a few pertinent photography sites:
On Luminous Landscape
From Gadling
And here's an the aurora forecaster.
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