The Aurora Borealis

December 19, 2014

Fairbanks is well known for the Northern Lights, which appear in the area during 243 days per year, in the average. I’ve had hard time tracking them down so far either because I was too lazy or because the weather was not so good. I receive twitter notifications whenever there is a reported showing of the lights in Fairbanks area from @AuroraNotify. See also Aurora Forecast by Geophysical Institute at University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

Yesterday, I got the notification around 8:30 PM, so I went up to UAF, but I couldn’t see anything strong. So I just took some photos of the sky with the myriads of stars.

And I noticed the green band, although very faint, on the bottom right corner of the picture, which suggests that there must be some aurora activities that are not so visible because of the light pollution. I decided to investigate further and drove up to Sheep Creek road, where I encountered this:

It moved constantly and showed us its magnificent glamour before it got a lot fainter.

What a great experience it was.

MH.