Friday Night Lights

As we were getting ready to leave Friday morning, I peeked outside to see a beautifully clear sky before sunrise. My mind started racing about all the preparations we’d made for this trip, and when would we ever get around to another one, when we’re literally handed perfect conditions for Aurora viewing. And we were already here. So… after a few phone calls, we were able to push our departure date by a day, including flights and accommodations without any extra charge, other than paying for an additional day on the rental car! (I cashed in points at a chain hotel in Fairbanks, as the lodge we’d been at was booked for that night.) Now, it would just depend on the weather remaining good, and the Aurora choosing to show up.

So this is how it started, before 10 pm, and we were excited and hopeful, due to the clear sky, and my literally duct taping my focus ring on my camera. :)

It looked like a spotlight shooting up from behind the trees.

In the next picture you can see the red above the curtains on the right, as well as shooting vertically in the bands on the left:

We were surprised to learn that the vast majority of the lights are green, with only rare appearances of red, blue, pink, violet and yellow. I had always seen images of this rainbow hued phenomenon, when what we saw that night was pretty uniformly green. It was only looking at my pictures later, that I saw I had captured the traces of red. We couldn’t appreciate that in the sky ourselves.

The “spotlight” got bigger and brighter -

…until it stretched from one horizon to the other -

I was getting really cold, but I just couldn’t make myself go inside, as the sky was just lit up…

…and the curtains started dancing.

I thought that was going to be my favorite shot, but then the swirling started -

Unfortunately, we couldn’t capture this on video, as my camera was too cold to do it, and for Steve’s phone, it was too dark. Steve was able to get a few tries at video, but unless you were there, you really can’t tell what’s going on, so I won’t torture you.

The light was so bright by this point, that the center white area in the picture above shows that my timed exposure was too long, where earlier, on the same settings, you could just make out the faint glow.

The Big Dipper straight overhead:

As I was writing this blog, I suddenly remembered that the owner of Aurora Pointe, where we were based for our viewing and photography, had sent me a link to pictures he took of us, as well as photos and videos he shot of the Aurora. In this first one, it started well, but then went out of focus, so i stitched two parts together:

In the second one, a girl walked up when he started shooting, so I trimmed the first few seconds, but you can see her gesturing at the bottom of the picture. If you just watch the right end of the ribbon of aurora, you can see it dance. You might want to watch this several times, trying to ignore the person in the bottom center of the screen. ;)

I just kept taking picture after picture because it was constantly changing…

…and lighting up the whole sky -

Another from @AuroraPointe:

…and me in action, on the right side of the picture:

it was hard to capture the “verticality” of the lights, because the constant movement in a prolonged exposure tends to cause it to blur together, but I captured some here, as well as getting a glimpse of yellow and red at the horizon -

As the night approached 0130, and my feet were ice blocks (with ice sticks for toes), the light was fading, so we reluctantly called it quits. Hope you enjoyed as much as we did!