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120 Knowledge and technology 09 LANGUAGE SKILLS EXPLORE EXTRAS Explore reading: How a stunning aurora video was made You graduated from an international technical college three years ago. Your former school is planning a plenary discussion titled ‘Future careers’ for current students and their parents. You’ve heard about this and want to take part as one of the speakers. Write an email to your former headteacher in which you:   describe your studies /work experience in the three years since you left school.   outline your professional plans for the future.   comment on the working world as it appears to a young man /woman just about to embark on a career. Write around 250 words.  Writing guide, Letter / Email , p. 183. 37 Read the text about the challenges of filming the northern lights. Complete the sentences (1–7) using a maximum of four words. Write your answers in the spaces provided. The first one (0) has been done for you. 38 “We jumped out and said, ‘The hell with the flu, we have time back home to get healthy again; we have to do some work,’” recalls Possberg, who was photographing aurora borealis in February in Tromsø, Norway, as part of her Arctic Lightscapes project.  Auroras result from charged particles that are flung off the sun’s surface during solar storms known as coronal mass ejections. When the particles collide with the Earth’s atmosphere, they cause geomagnetic storms that trigger the neon- coloured auroras.  Over the past year, Possberg and her husband, Claus Possberg, have travelled four times to the Scandinavian Arctic to photograph the phe- nomena, which appear as stunning light shows in many northern countries, especially during dark winters. Claus is a radiologist who’s also an avid traveller and photographer, and Anna is a full-time professional filmmaker. The Arctic Lightscapes project, which the couple funds independently, resulted in a time-lapse video: a series of still photographs stitched together into a video format and published on Vimeo recently.  Possberg, who’s based in Freyung, Germany, started Arctic Lightscapes in 2012 during a photography trip to Sweden, when she found herself “attractedmagically” to auroras but realised that filming them is impossible. Gorgeous as they are, the light emitted by auroras is too faint for most film cameras to pick up.There are some video cameras on the market, but they don’t capture the auroras very well, she said. But Possberg came across some blogs describing how to make aurora films using still photography. Because auroras occur in low light – generally challenging for photographers – it wasn’t easy to learn, but she got a lot of practice during the couple’s four expeditions to see northern lights: twice to Norway, once to Iceland, and once to Finland. “The first time you see an aurora, it doesn’t seem to be real – it’s like from another world,” she says. “You are infected – you want to see them every day.”  To photograph northern lights, it’s best to use a light-sensitive digital single-lens reflex camera, or DSLR, with a full-format setting to capture as much light as possible, Possberg says. The couple shot with three cameras using light-sensitive, wide-angle lenses that were programmed to take a picture every 30 seconds. Possberg also used her iPad to change the ISO and shutter speed – two ways tomanipulate howmuch light is registered by the camera’s sensor – remotely without touching the camera.  Because cold temperatures sap battery life quickly, Claus customised batteries normally used for computers to power the cameras. Those batteries lasted up to 12 hours in –4 °F (–20 °C). To steady the cameras in the polar wind, the team How a stunning aurora video was made Even a fever couldn’t keep filmmaker Anna Possberg from photographing auroras literally dancing atop her car. Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv