2024 Life Logs, Day 283: Northern Lights in Falmouth
Date: Thursday October 10, 2024
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Cooler; High Temp 59, Low 42 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth, MA
Wow! While Kevin, Claire, and I were out walking Shadow this evening, Claire looked up and saw that the sky to our left was glowing red. She asked if I knew what might cause that. Could it be Arora Borealis? I didn’t think so, but I called Heather to see if she knew. She confirmed that indeed we were supposed to be able to see the northern lights tonight. Due to a geomagnetic storm that could reach Earth today, yesterday NOAA announced that the northern lights might be visible over much of the country tonight. Claire had never seen them before, and she was super excited. Kevin, with his wonderful sense of humor, thanked me for arranging this specular event while they are visiting. We were just so lucky to be outside walking and have Claire notice the sky. Mark and I saw green-colored northern lights when we were in Alaska in 1974 but seeing them around the corner from my house on Cape Cod was thrilling.
The first photo I took at 7:26 pm was just a quick point and click with my phone’s camera and I was elated that it came out great.
It captured perfectly the deep pinkish red color that we could see with our naked eyes. We walked up and down the street to try and get a better view and then I suggested we abort the walk and drive down to Falmouth Beach. By the time we got there, the deep pinkish red was no longer visible to the naked eye, but we saw other people with their phones pointed to the sky. We walked to the end of the beach to get away from the streetlights and then we could see the faint outline of what we thought might be the lights. So, I pointed my camera in that direction and the camera could ‘see’ much more clearly than we could. I changed the setting on the camera to nightlight that takes a photo over a 3 to 5 second period of time and that captured the lights.
But I must admit that as beautiful as the photos were, seeing the red sky when Claire first noticed it was the truly exciting moment.
When we got home, Claire and I stayed outside and took more photos, capturing my house and their ‘house’ in the photos.
I am not sure what I can arrange for tomorrow to top seeing the northern lights tonight, but I thought out loud that it would be amazing if the cranberry bog harvest started tomorrow. I don’t think we can possibly be that lucky, but I can hope.
