Category: Photography

During the past few weeks the night skies have been alive with activity. September 8th looked promising enough from the back of my house to tempt me out with my camera to a dark, isolated place to see what I might capture. At the base of a tower on Tower Hill, I popped up through the open roof window in my Rav4, propped my camera and tripod up on the roof and pointed it north. There was a steady stream of gentle green haze twisting and reforming just at the horizon. With a remoter shutter, I snapped several hundred (somewhat dark) images in hopes of being able to create a time lapse video of the movement since none of the individual shots appeared interesting on their own. Here’s what I posted to FaceBook.

Not a real fair representation of what I saw but I’m learning. And then what I saw, took my breath away! The long lines shooting up from what was in my viewfinder extended directly overhead and almost to the opposite horizon; narrow ribbons undulated like parallel ripples in a narrow stream. The expanse of the lines of light was astounding.

I relocated down the hillside, parked again and popped back out through the roof for a new perspective on the increasingly active sky. I truly didn’t know where to look. To the south, I could see a dancing of line of light mimicking the tree line.

Directly above it began to look like a flower opening.

Then to the west over Ignace, it shredded itself into brilliant streaks.

I decided to snap photos until my camera battery died or the card was full; which ever came first. I filled the card and headed home. It was hardly possible to sleep from the intense adrenaline rush of the experience.

The photos are just a glimpse of the majesty of the sights that night. They do cause me to seek out the next opportunity to better the shots; longer exposures and improved focus on the foreground. (It’s not easy getting a good focus through a tiny viewfinder in the dark but we’ll see what we can do…)