Northern Lights

From an email:

Northern Lights over Yellow Knife , Yukon , Canada ..





Aren't these pictures gorgeous?

I have always wanted to see the aurora borealis.

My dream is to go to Alaska and spend a few weeks. I would hope to time it out to see these fantastic skies!

Imagine just standing around, looking up, and that is waving around above your head! I would probably end up with hypothermia for standing out there for hours with my mouth hanging open! I wonder if people in the north take that for granted. It would be like looking out at the moon. Oh, there it is again, the moon. Although there are some pretty awesome moonrises. But imagine if there were three or four moons and it was an everyday thing. Ho hum, there's all our moons.

Remember when Hale-Bopp came around in 1996-97? We bent over backwards to try to see it before it became so easily visable. We went down to the beach one night because we thought we'd get a better view. We spent hours down there with the kids and a telescope. Loads of other people were doing the same thing. Every once in a while someone would yell, "I think I see it!" And we'd all go running over to his telescope. When we went home and pulled in to the driveway, there was HaleBopp as big and bright as could be, even without the telescope. I know. But we checked on it every night until we couldn't see it any more.

The email also showed this photo, a fire rainbow. It said the picture was captured this week on the Idaho/ Washington border. The event lasted about 1 hour. Clouds have to be cirrus, at least 20.000 feet in the air, with just the right amount of ice crystals, and the sun has to hit the clouds at precisely 58 degrees. Beautiful!