Aurora Over Raufarhöfn
Image Credit & Copyright:
Stephane Vetter
(Nuits sacrees)
It was all lined up even without the colorful aurora exploding overhead.
If you follow the apex line of the recently deployed monuments of
Arctic Henge in
Raufarhöfn in northern
Iceland from this vantage point, you will see that they point due north.
A good way to tell is to follow their apex line to the line connecting the end stars of the
Big Dipper, Merak and Dubhe, toward
Polaris, the bright star near the north
spin axis of the Earth projected onto the sky.
By design, from this vantage point, this same apex line will also point directly at the
midnight sun
at its highest point in the sky just during the
summer solstice of Earth's northern hemisphere.
In other words, the Sun will not set at
Arctic Henge during the summer solstice in late June, and at its
highest point in the sky it will appear just above the aligned vertices of this modern monument.
The above image was taken in late March during a
beautiful auroral storm.