Friday, November 11, 2005

How to Describe the Northern Lights?

My camera doesn't have the settings to take aurora photos but, oh, my, seeing them in person is just an incredible experience. Even the experience of waiting for them can be memorable. The skies here are nothing like they are in Florida, where everything seemed lost in the countless street lights. Here, you can go outside and look up and it's like layers and layers and layers of twinkling stars above you, brighter than you could ever imagine, with the planets visible at any given time sparkling brightly up there, too.

Then, you'll see a glow, usually green, that seems to be pulsing.

Next thing you know, the sky is filled with this just indescribable movement, pulsing, wave-like, I always relate it to the '60s light shows, sometimes filling the entire sky, other times in smaller displays. It'll reach down, then curl around, form an oval and pulse out from the center in endless motion, or sometimes be a pulsating, wavelike curtain of color across the sky. No matter who you believe in as a Higher Being, it's easy to believe this is just for them and we're simply lucky enough to see it.