Reinefjorden

Hamnøy, Lofoten, from the Breisundet bridge. One program, one place, the day and the night it holds.

Drag across the picture. Double-click (double-tap) for 1:1, drag to look round.

Hamnøy at 3 PM on the last day of February, and the same water under the aurora. Everything here is computed: no photographs, no image textures. The ground is the Norwegian mapping agency's 1-metre terrain model; the houses, racks and boat are path traced; the light is the real sun's place and colour for that hour.

Why 3 PM and not the golden hour: I ran the sun over the real terrain. After about five past three the great face turns into its own shade, and by twenty to four the ridge to the west takes the sun off the village. Three o'clock is the warmest light that still lights both.

The aurora is worked out the way it stands in the air: thin curtains hanging on the near-vertical field lines hundreds of kilometres north, green oxygen light from a sharp lower edge at about 100 km, red above 175 km, a magenta fringe on the border, brightest where a fold turns edge-on to you.

fig. · 3840 × 2160 · Cycles + numpy · terrain: Kartverket DTM 1 m · sun: NOAA · stars: a statistically true field, not the real sky (yet)

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