Northern Lights Revisited

Bathroom with a view -March 9, 2011

This is my second post on the Northern Lights.  I decided to revisit the topic because last night I saw perhaps the best show I've ever seen in the 10 winters I've spent here.  And yes, I still have the same point-and-shoot, just because Ashton Kutcher pretends he uses one at his yacht soirées on TV it's still cheap in every way-camera I did in my first Aurora post, so there is a limit to what I can do for you on this blog.  And yet the lights were so very amazing for a 30 minute period yesterday (a fact I discovered while brushing my teeth and peering through my bathroom window) that I threw on my coat and boots in a hurry and raced to the deck.

Off my deck, and over the neighbor's house

Now, I've always heard that the lights can make some sort of a celestial sound, but I believe this to be an unsubstantiated urban legend.  I listened very closely last night while the lights were wildly dancing overhead -filling the sky with green and red- but once more I heard nothing.  Actually, there was a moment when I got super excited upon hearing an electric, static-ish sound that was eerie yet in my imagination easily attributed to something outer-spacey like the Northern Lights....... However I soon realized it was the sound of approaching truck tires on a nearby road.  So no sounds for me, but the lights were very intense, and showed that seldom-seen red lace around the edges just to make me happy.  So here are a couple of pictures of one of the most beautiful phenomena in nature we are privileged to see on occasion in Alaska.  Take that Ashton Kutcher!

PS and off-topic: stay tuned for my Alaskana gift-giveaway to come in a few days :)