Dancing Celestial Lights

© Photographer:Roman Krochuk | Agency: Dreamstime.com

The first time I saw the northern lights, I was in college, walking home from the library late one night. I noticed the sky was glowing to the north, but just wrote it off as city glow, even though it was green and not orange. The next day, I heard on the news that the aurora had been visible the night before. I looked right at it and didn't realize what it was! Chalk it up to fatigue and a cold night, with me hurrying to get back to the dorm.

The second time I saw the aurora was when I lived in the Twin Cities. Even though I was in the brightly lit suburbs, I was able to watch the faint green lights from my balcony. It was a mostly clear night with just a few wispy clouds passing by. But I really couldn't see the lights unless there was a cloud there to act as a reflector. Not a spectacular display, but had I been away from city lights, it would have been.

The northern lights have fascinated and troubled people for centuries. Often the lights were considered omens of coming wars or famines. Elsewhere, they were thought to be the souls of ancestors or dead warriors. But my favorite explanation is that the lights were the reflection of a great treasure: either huge swarms of herring (a belief from Scandanavia) or the ultimate motherlode of gold (believed by prospectors during the Klondike gold rush).

In fact, the aurora originates with the sun and its solar winds, which impinge on the Earth's atmosphere. The beauty of this arrangement is that scientists now can predict, fairly accurately, when the aurora will occur. Check out the link to spaceweather.com. You can sign up for alerts so you don't miss the next great aurora display.

And from NASA, we have this extraordinary image:


It's the aurora borealis from space, taken by the crew of the shuttle Atlantis during a mission this past summer. Somehow it's comforting to know that the northern lights are just as beautiful and ethereal from above as from below.