On the occasion of a work trip to Helsinki, Finland, I decided to take the Canon 60Da camera and the tripod to the suitcase. I did not have much hope of being able to use it because I was not going to have time to leave the hotel, nor did I have anything planned to photograph. Yes, there was one aspect that seemed interesting, and that is that the hotel was close to a lake, which in Finland is not uncommon as the country has almost 190,000 lakes and practically any location outside the cities (the hotel was about 30 kms away from Helsinki) has a nearby lake.
Upon arrival at the hotel, the conjunction of favorable aspects began: the sky was clear and the lake called Tuusula was attached to the hotel, so there was no need to travel to photograph the stars on the lake. When it was dark I did not hesitate, with the camera and a tripod I went to the hotel garden and set out to find a suitable place.
The upper photograph shows the appearance of the views from the hotel to the lake, an incredible environment that provided good isolation from the light pollution of the area, if it were not for an inopportune sculpture illuminated in the middle of the lake. Naively I asked at the hotel reception if they could turn off the sculpture but they looked at me with a strange face and I did not insist.
Looking at the sky I saw that the orientation was north and I set out to photograph the big bear and the polar star, to have a memory that only in those latitudes is possible to get: the polar star very high in the sky, specifically at 60º, front at 36º of the photographs that I usually take in Cádiz. In the following photo, the Polar in the upper part and in the center:
The surprise were those lights of greenish tones that were changing little by little and that are aurora borealis very unusual in an area so south of Finland.
Other pictures of auroras:
Of course they are not the best pictures of northern lights, but they are a totally unexpected gift in an area so south of Finland, to the point that the next day it was on the local news that extraordinary had been observed northern lights in the vicinity of Helsinki.
Sometimes the stars are conjured in our favor, but if we do not have the camera at hand, we will miss being able to photograph them.