Light, Camera, Action!

 The Aurora Borealis, or more commonly called the Northern Lights, are an awesome phenomenon seen as you get closer to the north and south poles.

Captain Obvious will tell you that you have to be lucky to see the Northern Lights, as well as having a dark, cloudless sky. Until the end of July, the nights never really got dark while I was in McCarthy. May, June and July, you could sit outside on the picnic table at 3 AM and still read a book without any extra light source. Once August hit, it started getting darker.  And by the end of August, you actually needed a flashlight to walk around after 9 PM.  That’s when the magic started.

While in McCarthy, I think I saw the Northern Lights three or four times, and on my journey home, I saw them three different mornings. Due to the light spectrum and our eyes, you really can’t see the northern lights at this latitude without a filter of some sort, like your camera. That’s when you’re able to see the intensity of the different colors associated with the Northern Lights.  Green is the most common color you see with the northern lights.  Other colors include red and blue. If you’re lucky, you get the purple, yellows, and pink.

Here are some random pictures of the Northern Lights that I saw while in Alaska and Canada.