Meet Tom Kerss Hurtigruten’s Chief Aurora Chaser
Tom Kerss has off icially come onboard as Hurtigruten's Chief Aurora Chaser, it’s the fi rst appointment of its kind in the world. Here, he tells us why he loves the Northern Lights…
Can you remember the fi rst time you saw the Northern Lights? I was probably about fi ve years old. It was when we lived near Lossiemouth, on the northeast coast of Scotland, in the early 1990s. If you stand on the beach there, you can sometimes see Northern Lights displays in winter, but nothing like what you get in Norway with ribbons of light fl owing overhead.
Where have you seen the Northern Lights so far? Apart from Canada, almost exclusively in Lapland, Norway, and Iceland. But Norway is my favourite. Norway has the most dramatic foreground I've ever seen. While Iceland is a wonderful bit of dry land to stand on and see the Northern Lights, it's rather blackened. Norway’s northern regions are dazzling.
Describe your ideal Northern Lights viewing experience. I have two! The fi rst is on my own. I jump in the car and drive out past where the streetlights stop to somewhere so wild that I don't have a sense of any kind of civilisation around. The other experience I love is watching the reactions of people who've never seen the Northern Lights before. When the fi rst bright features start to appear, the excitement that people have is soul fi lling. It's palpable. Some people go silent, and others say… everything!
What goes through your head when you watch the Northern Lights? I usually forget about the science initially. There are always a few minutes of plain awe when any Northern Lights display starts to pick up. Then, as I've become keen on the short-term forecasting of auroras, especially if I'm with a group of people, often I watch the dynamics and try to clue people in on where to look next.
Have you experienced everything about the Northern Lights by now? It’s known that, on very, very rare occasions, the Northern Lights can make wonderful crackling sounds. But a specifi c set of conditions need to form for auroras to speak to us: very still air, that then cools very quickly. When that happens, a warm air layer can get trapped, which acts as a static gap for charge to build up during a very active display. The charge then results in a crackling sound. But in my 250-odd nights of aurora chasing, I’ve never heard them. Yet! I’m hopeful that I will one day!
Finally, what keeps you going back for more? That's easy! The aurora off ers something that nothing else in the sky or I think on Earth off ers, and that is a promise that the best display of my life is yet to come. I don't know when it's going to be, but I do know that I don't want to miss it.
Your clients can join Tom this winter along the Norwegian coast on a dedicated Astronomy Voyage departing 28th September 2024 or 23rd January 2025.
Scan the QR code to fi nd out more
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