I've been reading articles all last week on increased solar flare activity, and sure enough the results of the Sun's coronal mass shedding were clearly evident in the sky last night.

At about 12:00am AKDT I went out on the balcony. I had been watching this site: http://sec.noaa.gov/pmap/pmapN.html for hours. Sure enough, there were two long trails of light spanning the entire sky. They were really faint, though, probably because of the light pollution from the city, so Jean and I hopped into the car and drove out to Flattop mountain park, east of the city and really high up.

As we crested the winding road to the top, the entire windshield was filled with the sky on fire. It was amazing! I wanted to stop the car right there but we were almost at the top. There was a bright blue curtain of swimming light that was bursting and gleaming filling my entire view. We got to the top and got out of the car and watched the light show for about an hour. Long belts of glowing brightness that went from blues to even reds at points danced in the sky. The last time I had seen anything like this was on vacation in Canada, when I was so young that it scared me to tears. I remember it being the most awe inspiring thing imaginable, but it was so frightening to me to see the entire sky burning and moving faster than I though it should be able to. For years I looked up pictures of aurora to try to imagine what it was like... but it's really impossible to get an idea of what it's like in photos. I wished I hadn't shielded my eyes and been braver.

Well, last night lived up to my memory, for sure. Those few times when the curtains of light were at their brightest were overwhelmingly awe inspiring. I wasn't scared this time, though, but I can remember why I was scared. Seeing the sky like that really must be frightening to someone who doesn't understand what is going on. Last night I looked on and saw charged particles from the sun ending their long journey by getting funneled into the poles of the Earth's magnetic field and interacting with the ionosphere, giving off photons. As a child, I saw something huge and unexplainable and totally out of the ordinary going on in the entire sky that I couldn't understand no matter how hard I thought about it. That was really what was frightening about it.

There might be more tonight, but it's really cloudy. I'm just thankful that I finally got to see them again after all these years, and that I kept my eyes open this time. And I'm glad I got to see them with Jean, the one that I love, who brought me here to this wonderful place.