Morning Skies - Night Skies

12 October 2012
9:35 PM

Sunrise at	8:36 AM	in direction	107°	East-southeast
Sunset at	6:37 PM	in direction	253°	West-southwest

Duration of day: 10 hours (6 minutes, 41 seconds shorter than yesterday)

The return of day and night brings with it the lovely interplay of light and dark that occurs at dawn and dusk.  I took photos of this same angle in the spring as the sun hours increased, and now I capture it as the light decreases.  It is still beautiful.  When traces of cloud exist, the hues of angled sunlight stream up across the sky.  When the sky is clear at the horizon, an intense gold at the horizon meets blues and grays.

The transitions are especially enchanting here, to my way of thinking, because it changes so much from day to day.  I am always amazed at the speed with which we move from one stage of light and dark to the other.  I guess the in between time, September to November and February to April, are the times which used to feel the most "normal" to me.  There is a balance of light and dark.  The work day and outside activities and chores begin with the rising sun and end with its setting.

As I wrote that last sentence, I realized I don't feel that way as much now.  The days being completely light or mostly dark has also become natural to me and I experience the months where it alternates between day and night as transitional seasons rather than "normal".

The grace of return to the dark time is the aurora are now visible.  I heard on the radio, earlier today, that the aurora activity was predicted to be quiet; a value of 2 (or quiet) on a scale of 0 to 9 based on the Aurora Forecast that the Geophysical Institute on campus posts daily.  The announcer noted that aurora was unlikely, but still there would be a chance to see them.

As chance would have it, I was out tonight.  First I went to Pioneer Park to serve spaghetti in celebration of the Yukon Quest's 30th anniversary.  When the line became a trickle, I visited with Aliy, Allen, and Jodi Bailey for awhile and then left.

And, as chance would have it, Lucy Apatiki of St. Lawrence Island is staying in the downstairs apartment.  St. Lawrence Island is the 6th largest island in the United States, which just goes to show that we do not have many islands within our borders.  Gambell, Lucy's home, is about 36 miles from the Chukchi Pennisula in Siberia, Russia.  She is attending the Yukon Presbytery meeting, hosted at University Community Presbyterian Church.  I volunteered to house her and when I left Pioneer Park, it had been my intent to go home, but instead I found myself driving over to the church.

They were just settling into the scripture reading and sermon when I arrived and I stayed, so I could take her home, but also because I wanted to be there.  It was one of those moments when I was actually listening to my soul speak and was guided to what I needed.  Then, when we drove home, magic!  On the horizon I saw the aurora and pointed them out to Lucy.  She said she does not see them as often as we do because it is so often cloudy in the Bering Sea - only in the deep of winter when it is exceptionally cold.  As we drove, we watched the light patterns expand from a suggestion of lines across the horizon to well defined displays.

I took photos, of course, and they are not stellar.  I don't have the caliber of camera needed and I was not in the vantage point to get a full sky image, and I really had no experience of taking photos of the aurora.  But in keeping with many other shots I've published,  the photos suggest what I saw from my deck tonight.  I say "suggests" because I never quite got it right.  All I could see at first was black and had to trust I was point the right way.  Then I increased the magnitude and got more color, but lost the perspective.  I know I needed to change a setting, but in the dark, I really was not sure which one that could be.  I was really surprised that I actually captured some images!

The anomaly of the digital world, however, is that the images render well on the display screen of my digital camera, but have not translated well into iPhoto.  So what I have below, unedited can only be seen when opened to the full size and on my laptop, the screen must be tilted in just the right way.  In that way it is true to life, as aurora when quiet, although visible to the human eye across the entire expanse of sky, are subtle and elusive.

What joy that my eye can see clearly what the camera and computer can not.