since i arrived in fairbanks, it rained every night, depriving us aurora-hunters of the clear skies that are needed for optimal aurora-viewing (apparently the japanese are quite the aurora fan too! have a few of them staying in this hostel).
but no matter, i thought. i have a tour booked to see the aurora out at murphy dome. surely there will be something.
so the night of the tour came… and the signs were not good. for one, it was raining. two, the aurora forecast indicated ‘quiet activity’, which is on an even lower scale than ‘low activity’.
a side note about the rain: according to our guide, alaska is supposed to be a ‘desert’, and fairbanks normally only gets about 7~11mm of rain a year. but this year, they’ve already had like 20mm of rainfall since july. so, freak weather i suppose.
anyway, ever the optimist, i knew that god (i have no religion but i believe in a higher being, so i’m using this in as non-religious a sense as possible) wouldn’t let me endure that 40-hour mind- and body-wrecking journey for nothing. he has never disappointed me once, and i don’t see why there should be a first time :p (excuse my logic)
so we drove out to murphy dome, and waited… and waited… and waited…
while we waited, our guide explained to us that 80% of the time, you don’t get spectacular aurora-sightings like those you see in natgeo photos. and the rest of the time, the aurora photos you capture are all time-lapse photos taken with 30-45s exposure, so what you see in the photos is actually the movement of the light, but in real life the lights are usually just a strip or band that dances in and out of our view.
after waiting for a loooong time, our guide pointed to this wispy whitish strip in the sky and said that may be an aurora, but he wasn’t too sure because it could just be a cloud that was being lighted by the moon nearby.
as we stared at it for a while more, we started to see that there was a greenish tinge to it, and he conceded that there is a good chance that the streak IS an aurora, especially since it seemed to be dancing (note that clouds do change their shapes as well, so for a first-timer like me i would never have been able to recognise it as an aurora). let’s just say that if i had seen it on my own, i would never have given it a second glance.
i whipped out my camera, set a 15s exposure and an extremely high iso (stupid amateur me, but you learn from mistakes) and took a picture.
the picture turned out looking like it was taken in the day due to the high iso, but what seemed to be a streak of wispy cloud turned out to be a streak of weak aurora display. the green light of the aurora in the photo was unmistakable. SCORE!!
then it started to cloud up and the streak was reduced to a small area, which i practiced taking photos of with different iso settings.
but the sky never cleared up, so disappointingly and unwillingly, we agreed that it was probably it, and made to leave.
but as we were making our way down, i spoke to god. surely there must be more, you can’t have made me come all the way here for… this??
and indeed, there WAS more! on the way down we had some pretty clear sky and we spotted some aurora activity right beside the moon, so we stopped to see if it would amount to something bigger.
and for a good ten minutes, we stood mesmorised, our spirits lifted by the green lights dancing right in front of our eyes beside the moon.
BEAUTIFUL.
as always, god keeps his promises.
i was very satisfied after the second display, knowing that this was the best i could get considering the unfavourable conditions of the night. and to have the sky clear up for us just as we were heading down is just miraculous serendipity.
interestingly, after we got back into the van, the sky clouded up again and we couldn’t see anything more.
seriously, PHOTOS WON’T DO. you need to see it in person.
i’ve been telling my friends that once i see the aurora, i can die without regrets.
i take that back – i want to see it AGAIN. i’m flying out tonight, but i wish i had more time here so that i can catch the light dance on its ‘high activity’ days…
maybe… i can see it from the plane tonight? *crosses fingers*
will definitely do this again. still on my bucket list!!!
lesson of the night? know what you want, and refuse to settle. insist on something better and the universe will deliver your heart’s desires.
p/s please excuse the lack of pictures. faced with the photographer’s dilemma, i decided to spend more time simply watching the lights than setting up the camera. 