Friday, February 08, 2013

Aurora Borealis

After wanting to see the northern lights ever since I was a child, I finally saw them (it?) last night!

I was awakened by Cornelius (of course, the pig wanted food), and when I came back up the stairs after feeding him and the other babies I glanced out my office window. Even without my contacts or glasses, I saw a bright flashing outside to the north. I ran and grabbed my specs and looked out to see a strange glowing in the sky, vertical stripes of brightness, one of them pulsating brighter every couple of seconds or so.

Thanks to night mode and a tripod, I was able to capture it:
Here, you can see the whole scene; the brighter part to the right was flashing.

Off to the left was one single shaft of light, barely visible here:

And here is the main part, flashing again:
What a thrill! I watched for about a half hour, awestruck by the spectacle.

Today, we're having to wait for Nemo, the big storm that's supposed to dump a couple of feet of snow on us tonight. The weather people have been hyping this up for the last couple of days, so I hope we see some real snow. Of course, it's easy for me to wish for this, as I'm still out on medical leave from my concussion, suffered last Monday. I mentioned it on Facebook; I just slipped on some ice and fell, bouncing my head on the ground. I am slowly recovering my ability to focus, after doing NOTHING for about a week. I was not allowed (by my doctor) to watch TV, play online, or even read a book. And of course, watching TV was completely overwhelming and headache-inducing anyway. I posted on Facebook after it happened, and then I was out after like five minutes.

I'm now able to watch TV, but I can't multi-task yet. Normally, I would be writing this post while watching TV and maybe having a conversation with AB. Not anymore, at least for a while. I am only able to do one thing at a time. No watching TV while playing Spider Solitaire on the iPad; no reading a book while mapping stuff on the computer and taking some notes on a notepad. I've only been allowed back on the computer (and online) for the last couple of days, though I get tired pretty easily.

Like now.

5 comments:

LauraHinNJ said...

Very cool! A mutual friend of ours is in some other freezing cold place in Canada just to see it.

Hope you're back up to speed soon... sucks that you got hurt on the job.

dguzman said...

Hey Laura--I can see why someone would go up there -- it's incredible. Mind-blowing.

MoB said...

This is such a magical sight. You will never get tired of it.

Sorry to hear about your injury. Get well soon!

dguzman said...

Master--thanks!

RG said...

Good capture of the sight! Get well .. ouch.