The Polar Night in the Russian North, Murmansk 🇷🇺

This was my first time experiencing the polar night and, to be fair, I had always imagined the winter at northern latitudes to consist of never-ending darkness, as if it was constant night-time. I found out that, although the sun doesn’t rise above the horizon for a few weeks (for Murmansk it’s around 40 days each year), there is still some, although very limited, daylight to do some activities. The astronomical twilight starts at 7 AM, but the sky is still indistinguishable from what we think of the proper “night“. Nautical twilight, when the sky slightly lightens up on the horizon, starts at around 9 AM, and by 11 AM the civil twilight has started and the light stays around the same until 2 in the afternoon, when it starts getting darker and it becomes night again over an hour. It was cool to see the Polar Night first-hand! My dream was fulfilled! I finally set foot in Murmansk, a place I had been dreaming of visiting since I was -4 years (minus four). At 2° above th