Catching the aurora borealis in Colorado
Around 10:30 on Friday night, Jana and I went outside to see if we could see the northern lights—caused by the massive solar storm—that folks were talking about on social media. Being in Denver and living right near the highway, we couldn't.
We decided to take a spontaneous drive up north on our way back to the apartment. Since this was a celestial rarity in our area and seeing the northern lights was on our bucket list, we figured why not? It was only an hour away at most. I pulled up a light pollution map in the area and found a good spot along the road heading towards a small town called Wiggins, northeast of Denver. It only took us forty-five minutes of driving.
As we got closer and the road got darker—light pollution dying away—a haze appeared in the northern part of the sky. We pulled over onto a service road and away from the highway only a hundred yards or so. There were other folks there, shooting glances at any car that showed up with its headlights beaming as if to say, "Show respect for the dark here." A cold wind. Hushed conversations were paying reverence to the celestial event above us.
Our eyes can't fully pick up the actual depth of an aurora borealis. It looked like the sky had a faded sheen over it, like smoke, hovering over the northern horizon and stretching east to west. There were streaks of brighter white in the haze, set against the darkness of space, almost like rays from the sun when it sets on the mountains. The whole "cloud" had faint tints of pink and green to it. There was movement, too. Not drastic—but subtle—pulses of light parallel to the horizon, shooting quickly through the "cloud" overhead and fading off. The whole thing seemed to shift slowly, too. Streaks became more prominent, and peaks and valleys formed in the hazy light.
I had no camera gear besides my iPhone, but a three-second exposure pulled off the shots below. There are no edits applied. I honestly didn't expect something this beautiful to come out of it, and to know that all this light and brilliance was being beamed at us but hidden in a way was truly magnificent.
We got home at 2 a.m. and immediately passed out in bed, and I have to... say it was very, very worth it.
