Northern lights!

[Aphrodite]

The Northern Lights are spectacular right now!

Go see if you can see them.

[madasacutsnake]

Nothing. Maybe I have to wait til dark.

[Simage]

nada... its snowing

[Audreyvgs]

Nope, can't. Swampgas over the Everglades.

[sparticle]

Well, I couldn't see Aurora Borealis, but I ran out on the third-floor balcony and found my rosemary plants and geraniums still sitting out there, and it's supposed to freeze tonight, and so I saved 'em. Thanks, 'Dite, because I never would have thought to do it otherwise and I would have been so sad in the morning. You are a...a...plantsaver!

[funkytuba]

ehh... just looks like nuclear fallout to me...

[Aphrodite]

They were amazing!
It is only the second time I have seen them.

They are like giant ribbons of light that flow and move like a flag in the wind. There are vertical bands of light that stretch and thin out. The colours change from the deepest red to emerald green. As you watch they become brighter and sharper, or they fade completely away. It was so wonderful to see.

I really figured Sparty might see it. I have to thank my kick-ass nephew for calling me to tell me to run out and see. He and I are going to do a Survival Week next year. Up north, one week, one back pack each.

[Frieda]

i wish i could see the northern lights! all we see here is the orange night sky.. the light of the greenhouses reflecting on the clouds.. they have to use blinds on the greenhouses twice a week, so then it gets dark.. the other days, our night sky is orange!

[Clytie]

they were gorgeous last night... *sighs* v beautiful

[sparticle]

Originally posted by Aphrodite
They were amazing!
It is only the second time I have seen them.

They are like giant ribbons of light that flow and move like a flag in the wind. There are vertical bands of light that stretch and thin out. The colours change from the deepest red to emerald green. As you watch they become brighter and sharper, or they fade completely away. It was so wonderful to see.

I really figured Sparty might see it. I have to thank my kick-ass nephew for calling me to tell me to run out and see. He and I are going to do a Survival Week next year. Up north, one week, one back pack each.

I actually did! It was very late, and I was on my way to bed, and I looked again out the third floor balcony glass door, and there they were!!!!


I stopped right there, afterward, even though it was 3:30 a.m., and sent this description to a dear friend:

I was headed for bed just now and I saw something through the door of the third floor balcony. A friend had mentioned that the Northern Lights were visible in Canada. I stepped outside to take a look, and as I was standing there in the icy wind, looking out over all the housetops and bare treetops, looking out over Lake Erie way beyond downtown, I saw the Northern Lights.

I saw them once a few years back, for the first time.

Oh, I wish you could have seen. A yellow sliver of moon hung in the eastern sky, the sky is sparkling with stars, the wind was so cold and sharp, and there to the North was the shimmering, tall curtain of Aurora Borealis, in her wintergreens and rose-petal pinks and faint golden hues. Very pale -- not as pronounced as I am sure it was elsewhere....

but it was so big and I am so small and it was so gorgeous and I am as nothing and the wind, the wind singing in the sleeping, denuded trees reminded me that we are really not much but specks of plasma and energy and carbon against something so much bigger and more amazing than we are or ever will be....

and it was so, so lovely, so really lovely, that I couldn't go to sleep before I came down and told you about it or I might lose the image....

and there I was in my slipper socks and my new Red Sox sweatshirt and freezing in the wind, and there were tears coursing down my cheeks and part was because of the damn cold and part because it was so beautiful , and it was just so rare and energizing and lovely and special, truly a blessing -- pink tinged and aqua and faded emerald, great wavering glowing curtains reaching upward from the great North, far across the lake and far beyond the wind-bent trees, all in puddled colors like sidewalk chalk drawings in a rainstorm, and over in the indigo velvet east, the ivory yellow oversized crescent moon hanging over all, like a scythe reaping the stars....the wind chimes on the painted wooden porches below played an erratic, eerie but pretty, disjointed melody ....

it was so beautiful i just had to share it with you.....it was truly magical....i wish i could send it to you.....so pretty and so precious and special to me it was, like a dream....there is nothing like the beauty God makes, all of it free and so indescribably, lovingly rendered

my nose is cold and me arse is froze too -- g'night.

I wanted to share that with you, too, 'Dite, and thank you again for pointing them out. I never would have looked if you hadn't mentioned them!

*hugs*

[Avalon]

This is an old site, but the photography is exquisite!


NOTHERN LIGHTS
http://www.iww.is/art/shs/pages/thumbs.html

[Aphrodite]

Oh I am so glad that some of you were able to see them. It truly was a gift. It really does change your perspective on how small we are in the grand scheme of things. I thought the same thing while I stood in a field and just looked straight up to see where the bands actually ended. I was very very tiny, a minute speck in a farmers field, in a stretch of land between two great lakes, on a large chunk of land on a globe, under a million stars dancing behind the sheer curtains of colours.

[sparticle]

Originally posted by Avalon
This is an old site, but the photography is exquisite!


NOTHERN LIGHTS
http://www.iww.is/art/shs/pages/thumbs.html

Whoa! Thanks for this! I sent the link to the friend to whom I sent the email.

[red]

I'm not able to see Northern Lights, probably too far south, but I can see ALL of the constellation Scorpius.

[sparticle]

Originally posted by red
I'm not able to see Northern Lights, probably too far south, but I can see ALL of the constellation Scorpius.

That's pretty cool, red.

I love the night skies.

Are you close to the city, or are you far enough from the glare that you can see the stars fairly clearly?