A major bucket list item for my wife and I that got checked off from my list (unfortunately, not my wife’s) was viewing the northern lights. We’ ve always wanted to go to iceland and view the northern lights, hopefully through those glass dome camping sites. However, with work, kids and other things going on in life, we never made plans. It was something we would do eventually. Since we moved to PNW, there were several ocassions when the suns activity resulted in aurora down to our latitudes, however, given the PNW weather all but once, it was clouded out. The one time it wasn’t clouded out, I ventured to a nearby park which was fully packed with people hoping to get a glimpse of the aurora but alas, we didn’t see anything. I took a few pictures that night and did capture some activity but it wasn’t visible to naked eye.
This past month though was a different story. It was a cloudless clear night. I ventured to the same park and took me 10 minutes to find a parking spot at 10pm at night. I found a spot far away from the road to avoid light from cars ruining the image and my night vision and immediately could see a faint wisp of what looked like clouds. I figured it was the aurora and took some pictures. It looked great in the camera. However, as my night vision adjusted and time passed on the activity only increased and i could clearly see the green and pink hues (although not as vivid as the camera captured them).
Everyone, including me, were awed by the brilliant display which at around 11pm at night peaked and exploded to cover almost the entire sky. It seemed to originate at the zenith and spread across the sky (mostly concentrated in East, North and West). The display was very dynamic chaning every few seconds and you could hear the oohs and aaahs from the crowd. It was Amazing! I spent another half hour looking at the sky, taking more pictures and headed back home.
I asked my wife to head out to the park right in front of our home to view the lights as it was clearly visible even with the light pollution around our house. However, she was too tired for the day and decided to try going the following day as the news reported that we should be seeing the activity all through the weekend. The following day she kept tabs on local social media groups to see if the activity was visbile for her to get out and check it out but, unfortunately, it wasnt. Well, all that means is the trip to Iceland is still on our bucket list of things to do. Hopefully, we will have the means and opportunity to go at some point in the future. We hope our kids have an interest as well and can appreciate this amazing celestial event!
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