Almost last chapter... In which our Go Stargazing team watch Astonishing Aurora Borealis seen from the deck of the Astonishing Borealis!!!

The weather brightened considerably and the snowy peaks lining our sail down the fjiords  looked glorious and sparkly in the sunshine against a (mainly) blue sky back drop.  

More awesome scenary.... the Go Stargazing team wrapt up their lectures ... only searching for the illusive Northern Lights remained. 

The tension from the night before dissolved in the sunshine the forecast for Aurora borealis was looking fairly positive - it was the captains farewell cocktsil party so everyone had their gladrags on..

We ate dinner and sky remained clear so we headed back to our room and donned as many layers as we could move in and proceeded to deck 10 in anticipation of stars and northern lights..... it did not dissappiont - just we got there as the bridge announced that the lights could be seen on the starboard side of the ship.

It was stunning. Slowly the intensity built. The auroral green became brighter and bigger areas appeared across the sky.  Tjere were huge arcs over the ship and glorious swirls high in the sky.  The  stars were sparkling through the green and pink tinted sky. It was magical. 

There were so many people on deck and the best thing - the ship turned as many lights off on the top decks as it was able to... made the whole experience so much beter.

After about an hour the display calmed down, there were so these little lumps of greenish tinge in the sky but we decided to go in and get warm. 

We weren't inside for long,  maybe 45 minutes, and then it all kicked off again. This time the whole sky was just full... there was barely a gap, and we could see aurora pulsating and rolling across the sky, dancing lights moving so fast it was just incredible. It was mesmorising.

Stunningly beautiful. Nature at its best... no light pollution.... all these pictures were taken on a mobile phone by a fellow passenger who was happy to share them.   My phone and camera are both too archiac to produce decent pictures. 

While these photographs depict very vivid lights I need to point out that seen by the naked the colours are not quite so bright - but definetely still visible and really much more beautiful and fascinating in real life. One of the most glorious displays nature offers.