Smoke and the Northern Lights

Winds turned easterly again yesterday, and Helsinki was suddenly overcome with smoke from the forest fires raging on the Russian side of the border. It has been alleged there's also a rubbish dump, which would include all sorts of nasties, on fire there, too.

My parents, though, the lucky buggers, saw aurora borealis, the Northern Lights, on Saturday night, while at the cottage in the countryside. It is no further north than Helsinki, but I saw nothing - the city lights beat them back. I have seen them twice before: once as a child, on ski holiday in northern Finland, and once here in Helsinki. (As luck would have it, on that night the whole of my end of the city was light-polluted even more than usual, due to the football stadium being lit for a match, so the colours were lost. They must have been really spectacular to be visible through stadium lights...)

Sadly, I only got pictures of the smoke. And not even particularly brilliant ones.