The other night my daughter in the prairies and I were texting. She urged me to go outside and see if I could see the northern lights. She lives one time zone east of me.
I put on shoes and a warm jacket and grabbed my flashlight and iPhone. “I’ll be back soon,” I called to Miss Moppet, who looked blankly at me. She hears those words a lot and knows that “soon” in our home can mean a long time.
It was chilly , and I had to get out of yard for a better sky view. Yes, there did seem to be faint lights up there. Pale green. As I walked down to the lake shore I got better views up what was up there.
At times there seemed to be faint waves of vertical rays. Then just one area at once would glow. The lights were big in size, stretching way up into the sky from close to the horizon. But faint.
I took photos with the phone. Then I walked home. When I got home I decided to try using my Nikon P80. I went outside and clicked away, using the “night landscape” setting. Suddenly I had a moment of enlightenment and went back indoors.
I hauled the big Nikon P1000 out and put it on the moon photo setting. The lights were brighter still. I took shots of the east, west, and north sky. For some I rested the camera on the edge of the patio railing. Others I used my left hand for support. I noticed the camera was leaving the shutter open for a few seconds.
I recalled once using Photoshop to process negatives. I had taken photos of the negatives and then edited them into reverse (negative) photos. They turned out as colour photos in rather strange hues. But perhaps, I thought, the technology could somehow pick up more northern light than my eyes could.
In the morning I pulled the chip out of the P1000 and got to work. I picked a few photos and fiddled around with different tools. These are my results. Amateurish, blurry, and brighter than what I saw. Except for the first one.
The iPhoto and P80 photos await another day. At quick glance, they all look black with no light at all showing except some house lights in the distance.
missmoppets cottage 