Milkyway in the mountains

Earliest Milkyway for 2017 Maudal

Milkyway Quest Maudal

Milkyway visible in Sola very late night

With the end of summer, comes the longer nights. With it dark night delights start to come enevelope us again ... one of the first would be starry sky, Milkyway and Aurora. Most anticipated for the month of August would be the Milkyway.

Norway being way up north does not experience Milkyway peak in Jun/July like every other locations at the lower latitudes ... Jun/July is the longest day of the year in the middle of the summer. There's barely any nights during those periods.

I have recorded Milkyway towards the end of April/May heading towards Spring but the night were fairly bright and the Milkyway isnt as intense as they are in Aug/Sep slightly off peak as far as the Milkyway season goes but still significant for northern latitudes.

There are indeed many delights to be expected in darkening nights come August.

Move House

After a bit more than 5 years living in Hundvag, we decided to move to a new rental in Hinna.

When we moved into Austbogeilen May 2012, Ali 12 and Aisya was 10 years old respectively. Both have grown up significantly since then. The little house we've been calling home suddenly feels shrunk up when all four of us were gathered in the same part of the house. Most obvious was when we have family and friends over ... the living was so small, guests have literally zero wiggling room!

Also after 5 years in Hundvag, logistics to schools and our respective offices gets a bit long winded with the two adults having to be in Tananger and Forus during office hours, and both kids in Revheim at the American International School. With the move to Hinna, hopefully the commute time will be slightly reduced for both adults, perhaps not so much for the children. Ali is starting at St Olav at the new schoolyear, while Aisya has one more year at Revheim before she too moves to St Olav in the city center.

We made the move during the downturn of the OnG industry so the rentals were rather competitive. We paid less for a bigger, more "centrally" (to Forus at least) located house on a little hill. Both kids now have bigger rooms to themselves which apparently is rather crucial for brooding teenagers. There's a large attic to fit all of our junk too.

My office is only 15-20mins away by bike/bus/car, which makes later nights possible.

Last flight over Hundvag and the last Bugs3 sunset flight from Austbogeilen.

A quick tour of the Hinna house after the movers left.


Though the new landlord lives in Oslo, we dont think we'll be able to find another landlord as pleasant, decent and friendly as our old Hundvag landlord, Andreas.  We'll miss both our old house, the farm and Andreas.

Our last sunset from our Austbogeilen house

This evening was our last day at the Austbogeilen house. We've moved most of our smaller items over the past couple of weeks using a rented moving van. The larger bulkier items will be taken care of by professional movers. We also hired professional cleaners to come around and sort out the final cleaning of our domain the past 5 years of our lives in Norway. Bye bye Austbogeilen!