aurora

I've seldom seen the northern lights. Only a couple of times, as far as I can recall. Many years ago, and there was just some green light in the sky - very little form. But it was noticeably green. This time, I went out a few times and didn't see anything. It wasn't until midnight that someone on Instagram said they were taking pictures with their phone of something they couldn't see with their eyes. A ha! I grabbed my camera and tripod and went outside. All I saw was some white streaks in the sky, which was cool because they had a shape, but when I applied my camera, the colors came out. In this shot, the colors were enhanced a little bit. I like that you can see red, yellow, orange, green and purple. The green/yellow showed up to my eyes as the white streaks, but I couldn't see the red at all, even when I knew where to look.



What was really cool was the movement. I'd seen video of curtains of light waving back and forth, but this wasn't like that. That sort of movement was just barely too slow to see - my photos show differences but I couldn't see movement. This was like... imagine the white streaks were clouds, and someone was playing a spotlight across them, quickly. It was bright stripes rising quickly across the existing streaks of light. And dim enough that I had to watch carefully to confirm what I saw. Very cool!

Once, when walking in the front door, I noticed a bright patch in the sky. It was white, not very big, and to the east. I assumed it was northern lights, but now I'm not sure. If it was, I wonder what else would have shown in the sky with a camera. And why was it in the east? What did I miss in the north? If it wasn't, what was it? It was too late for noctilucent clouds, and I can't think what else it could have been.