A strange and wonderful thing happened last night. We saw the Aurora Borealis. What a beautiful treat. At first I did not think we were seeing anything very spectacular or even unusual. The sky was a "foggy pinkish gray-blue-purple" (that is a color) that was not fluctuating or changing, just staying the same. The moon was a tiny crescent that could not send out much light. The light must be from the Aurora. How could the sky be light at midnight without any moonlight? I did not think it was the "northern lights" I thought they were supposed to be different from what I was seeing. BUT, without the moon, what was lighting the night? I was a little slow on the uptake--this was the Aurora giving us a little display of color.
No matter where I looked, north, south , east or west, the sky was the same color. I checked a couple of sources online and found pictures of the sky and they looked like the picture I was seeing. This must be the "lights" that everyone is talking about. We saw the Aurora. Frankly, we were not that impressed, so we went to bed.
I have traveled to the far north of this "blue ball" we call Earth, for the sole purpose of seeing the Aurora and, you guessed it...no luck. In Lapland we saw a very quiet night time sky. Same in Alaska, Iceland, Norway, Finland. I was beginning to think they were a figment of someone's imagination...yet I knew better, as I had seen the northern lights when I was a child in the San Francisco Bay Area.
One night, when I was about 5 or 6 years old the Bay Area had a unique solar storm, and the Aurora was visible from our backyard. I very clearly remember going outside with my daddy and looking at the night sky doing some amazing things. I remember the sky was greenish--not kelly green or emerald green but a hazy grayish green and the color fluctuated through different shades of that green. It was strange and beautiful and downright scary for this little girl. I held my daddy's hand really tight and I listened to him tell me about the northern lights. He was holding my hand, and then he picked me up and I was protected. The lights were not going to harm me as I was with my daddy. All was well. I was not scared anymore. I remember the lights in the sky, but I was more scared than in awe of them.
Fast forward at least 70 years, I'm definitely not a little kid anymore. About midnight the sky was a grayish pinky hazy blue-purple. The sliver of a moon did not illuminate the sky--the aurora did. The night was not filled with color and the light did not fluctuate. The light was too bright for a nighttime sky, yet there it was. We went outside, where it was cold and quiet, and we looked at the sky from the porch. It was not all that awe inspiring right then...so we went to bed. I awoke about 3 o'clock I looked out the window and the sky was alive. The color was bright for 3 AM. It was still a hazy pinky-bluey-purply color but it changed ever so slowly to a gray pink to a blue pink to purply blue-gray and back again. The color was dancing across the sky. Completely awesome.
Mother Nature has some "big shows" that take your breath away. Earthquakes, tornadoes, cyclones are a few that come to mind. Then she has geysers and hot springs. These are some of her dangerous tricks and displays. She shows us the White Nights in St. Petersburg where the night sky is bright white at 1 AM. And, then she gives us the Aurora Borealis. What a treat. Who knew there were dancing colors in the nighttime sky? There's a scientific explanation for the Aurora but I'm not going to bother you with that. I'm just going to say enjoy it. Who knows when we will see this phenomenon again from this not very far-northerly location. Remember, we're all in this together.
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