Northern Lights

And it's only mid October!

That's right!  Last night we got to see nature's best light show for the first time, or at least Mark and I did.  One of our good friends called around 10:00pm to let us know the northern lights were visible.  Sure enough, when we walked outside we could see the faint green glow low on the northern horizon.  At first they weren't much.  It looked more like a fog rolling in.  So we went back inside to watch a movie and warm up.  (The wind was strong and the temps in the 20s).  Throughout our movie we kept getting texts from friends about how much more active the lights were becoming.  Finally I couldn't take it anymore. The thought that it might be awhile before I get another chance to photograph the lights drove me to bundle up and tromp back out with my camera and tripod - and no idea how to photograph the northern lights.  
Apparently the northern lights, or Aurora Borealis, come from the energy of a solar flare.  As the energy from the flare rushes toward Earth it charges the atmosphere.  The charged atmosphere then creates sparks.  We see these sparks as the northern lights!  According to David Epstein, a New England meteorologist, scientists have even discovered that the lights have a sound to them.  
Eskimo tradition believes that the lights are torches to guide the recently deceased from this life to the next.  Southern Europe rarely get to glimsp the lights; it was believed that when the lights did display they foretold of war and destruction to come.  In fact just weeks before the start of the French Revolution, parts of England and Scotland reported an eerie display of the lights in fiery red.  Still to this day, Asian culture believes that to conceive a child under the lights will bring the child a lifetime of good fortune. 

Since the wind was blowing so hard and I knew I needed to have my shutter open for several seconds (a very still camera) I set my tripod about as close to the ground as I could get it.  When I went to take the picture however, it was so dark that the camera (which was set in semiautomatic mode) couldn't focus on anything!  I needed to switch it into full manual mode, but it was too dark to see the buttons on my camera.  Finally, after several failed, frustrating attempts, I got the camera to focus on the tundra grass and then after it focused on the grass I angled it up to the lights.  Not the best pictures in the world, but there's no doubt about how awesome a sight it was!