And the Northern lights commenced to glo w

“One of the things I would love to experience (and will, one of these days) is to view the Northern Lights, perhaps in Fairbanks or some place comparable. In surfing the web (and pursuing this fancy of mine in pictures), I stumbled upon some photos of the Aurora that were absolutely breathtaking. They were done by Jan Curtis and I will post the link here. There are nine pages to go through. Enjoy!!

a href=http://www.geo.mtu.edu/weather/aurora/images/aurora/jan.curtis/>Aurora Borealis”

“...or maybe Artex had a lot of bean burritos that night?”

“lol, sorry, I couldn't resist.

Great pictures...”

“Dang, bp, ya beat me to it yet again!”

“I've got high-speed Internet here...lol...”

“I've seen those pics before, Treebeard. Always great. Notice again, another fine service of Michigan Tech University! If you take out the Jan part of the address, you can see some pics from the Keewenaw, where MTU is located (and where I went to school!)”

“In a Northern Exposure episode, People from Japan visited Roslyn to conceive a child under the Aurora Borealis - This was supposed to make children very intelligent, I wonder if this is true?”

“Cool, SG! I'll do that. Thanx...”

“Tres cool pix there, treebeard. Thanks.”

“I don't know, Bobo. But it sounds like fun trying...”

“And she said, with a tear in her eye...”

“I actually got to see the northern lights from my backyard in central Alabama last year. I just happened to be taking the trash out and looked up. I thought for a minute and decided it could only be the northern lights. The next day on TT, Tilt or someone else posted a link about activity all the way into Alabama and Georgia. It was phenomenal.”

“See, taking the trash out isn't all bad...”

“You bet! Spaceweather.com, that's the spot. Watch out for those coronal holes....


WOOoooooooah.... Check This Out...



I heard NEAT was heading into range of SOHO... but Wow!”

“Is that little circle in the middle the diameter of the sun? If so, then that CME is a couple of million miles long...”

“Yeah, that's right bit. That circle represents the sun. CME's are HUGE! Wanna read the report I wrote on them for my astronomy class last semester? LOL!”

“Perhaps another time...

Ever read "Inconstant Moon" by Larry Niven, SG?”

“Dayhiker, that seems to me to be an incredible stroke of luck to have seen that. I don't know for sure, but my guess is that seeing the lights in a southern state would be a rarity. Correct?”

“Reeeeeeeealy rare... it was during the last solar maximum?”

“Wow. No sh it!”

“Bit - no I havn't.

There was a big CME back in 1980-somehting (cripes, I can't remember the year) that wiped out a power grid in Canada. The northern lights could be seen in the carribbean!

The sun cycle is 10 years long - so if we just had a solar maximum, it'll be another 10 years before the strong solar activity again. The lights are the reaction of the plasma (hot gas) from the sun interacting with the ions in the atmosphere at the poles of the earth. Different ions create different colors.”

“"Inconstant Moon" is a short story about what might happen if the Sun had a reallly big solar flare. Scary to think that the Sun is variable enough to produce a flare of sufficient magnitude to kill, but I suppose it could happen.”

“Heck, some really big chunk of stuff leftover from the creation of the universe could hit us too. Its all a crap shoot. I'm looking for a good read (I've been reading a management book for work) and maybe I'll see if my library has that book.”

“It's a short story, but it's in several collections of his, I think. I wish I could remember which ones, but I can't right now.”

“Can I get it at Matt's bookstore? LOL!”

“Oh, I doubt it...lol...it's been out of print for a long time.

A quick search reveals that the collection name is "Inconstant Moon". Duh, silly me...”

“We can see them really clearly in MT pretty often. They are so cool.”

“Enjoyed your pictures.I wanted to go to Fairbanks a couple of years ago when they were peak but it didn't work out.Maybe someone up there will schedule us a great TT trip soon.Ya think?”

“Trek, that would be awesome. It's not that outlandish either. Glad you enjoyed Jan Curtis' pix. They blew me away. I right click on any one picture and use it for background on my desktop at work, too.”

“It was such a huge stroke of luck that I dropped the garbage, drove to Georgia, and immediately bought a lottery ticket. Seriously though, to not only see but to not even be looking it for it in the first place was huge.”

“I have always found that the Northern Lights are way cool at this time of year!

All you have to do is go North about 700 miles to get a real good light show.

8)”

“"...The Northern Lights have seen queer sights
But the Queerest they ever did see
Was the night on the marge of Lake Labarge
I cremated Sam McGee" RS”

“Every time they were supposed to be visible from my climes, it was clouded over, socked in, and not a chance. I feel deprived!”

“You should be!

8)”

“Man, it'd be sooooooooo cool to see the northern lights! I'm going to do backflips when I finally see them.

Conceiving a kid under them ain't a bad idea. Can't hurt, eh?”

“Hey Artex tey are so cool I hope you get to see them!

8)”

“Oh, it was wild and weird and wan, and ever in camp o' nights
We would watch and watch the silver dance of the mystic Northern Lights.
And soft they danced from the Polar sky and swept in primrose haze;
And swift they pranced with their silver feet, and pierced with a blinding blaze.
They danced a cotillion in the sky; they were rose and silver shod;
It was not good for the eyes of man--'twas a sight for the eyes of God.
It made us mad and strange and sad, and the gold whereof we dreamed
Was all forgot, and our only thought was of the lights that gleamed.


a little more RS, from "The Ballad of the Northern Lights"”

“That was beautiful. RS rocks!”

“There's a lot more to that one. It goes for four pages, single-spaced.

Here's another 2 stanzas... oh heck, here's the whole damn thing, <G>


The Ballad of the Northern Lights

One of the Down and Out--that's me. Stare at me well, ay, stare!
Stare and shrink--say! you wouldn't think that I was a millionaire.
Look at my face, it's crimped and gouged--one of them death-mask things;
Don't seem the sort of man, do I, as might be the pal of kings?
Slouching along in smelly rags, a bleary-eyed, no-good bum;
A knight of the hollow needle, pard, spewed from the sodden slum.
Look me all over from head to foot; how much would you think I was worth?
A dollar? a dime? a nickel? Why, I'm the wealthest man on earth.

No, don't you think that I'm off my base. You'll sing a different tune
If only you'll let me spin my yarn. Come over to this saloon;
Wet my throat--it's as dry as chalk, and seeing as how it's you,
I'll tell the tale of a Northern trail, and so help me God, it's true.
I'll tell of the howling wilderness and the haggard Arctic heights,
Of a reckless vow that I made, and how I staked the Northern Lights.

Remember the year of the Big Stampede and the trail of Ninety-eight,
When the eyes of the world were turned to the North, and the hearts of men elate;
Hearts of the old dare-devil breed thrilled at the wondrous strike,
And to every man who could hold a pan came the message, "Up and hike".
Well, I was there with the best of them, and I knew I would not fail.
You wouldn't believe it to see me now; but wait till you've heard my tale.

You've read of the trail of Ninety-eight, but its woe no man may tell;
It was all of a piece and a whole yard wide, and the name of the brand was "Hell".
We heard the call and we staked our all; we were plungers playing blind,
And no man cared how his neighbor fared, and no man looked behind;
For a ruthless greed was born of need, and the weakling went to the wall,
And a curse might avail where a prayer would fail, and the gold lust crazed us all.

Bold were we, and they called us three the "Unholy Trinity";
There was Ole Olson, the Sailor Swede, and the Dago Kid and me.
We were the discards of the pack, the foreloopers of Unrest,
Reckless spirits of fierce revolt in the ferment of the West.
We were bound to win and we revelled in the hardships of the way.
We staked our ground and our hopes were crowned, and we hoisted out the pay.
We were rich in a day beyond our dreams, it was gold from the grass-roots down;
But we weren't used to such sudden wealth, and there was the siren town.
We were crude and careless frontiersmen, with much in us of the beast;
We could bear the famine worthily, but we lost our heads at the feast.
The town looked mighty bright to us, with a bunch of dust to spend,
And nothing was half too good them days, and everyone was our friend.
Wining meant more than mining then, and life was a dizzy whirl,
Gambling and dropping chunks of gold down the neck of a dance-hall girl;
Till we went clean mad, it seems to me, and we squandered our last poke,
And we sold our claim, and we found ourselves one bitter morning--broke.







The Dago Kid he dreamed a dream of his mother's aunt who died--
In the dawn-light dim she came to him, and she stood by his bedside,
And she said: "Go forth to the highest North till a lonely trail ye find;
Follow it far and trust your star, and fortune will be kind."
But I jeered at him, and then there came the Sailor Swede to me,
And he said: "I dreamed of my sister's son, who croaked at the age of three.
From the herded dead he sneaked and said: `Seek you an Arctic trail;
'Tis pale and grim by the Polar rim, but seek and ye shall not fail.'"
And lo! that night I too did dream of my mother's sister's son,
And he said to me: "By the Arctic Sea there's a treasure to be won.
Follow and follow a lone moose trail, till you come to a valley grim,
On the slope of the lonely watershed that borders the Polar brim."
Then I woke my pals, and soft we swore by the mystic Silver Flail,
'Twas the hand of Fate, and to-morrow straight we would seek the lone moose trail.

We watched the groaning ice wrench free, crash on with a hollow din;
Men of the wilderness were we, freed from the taint of sin.
The mighty river snatched us up and it bore us swift along;
The days were bright, and the morning light was sweet with jewelled song.
We poled and lined up nameless streams, portaged o'er hill and plain;
We burnt our boat to save the nails, and built our boat again;
We guessed and groped, North, ever North, with many a twist and turn;
We saw ablaze in the deathless days the splendid sunsets burn.
O'er soundless lakes where the grayling makes a rush at the clumsy fly;
By bluffs so steep that the hard-hit sheep falls sheer from out the sky;
By lilied pools where the bull moose cools and wallows in huge content;
By rocky lairs where the pig-eyed bears peered at our tiny tent.
Through the black canyon's angry foam we hurled to dreamy bars,
And round in a ring the dog-nosed peaks bayed to the mocking stars.
Spring and summer and autumn went; the sky had a tallow gleam,
Yet North and ever North we pressed to the land of our Golden Dream.

So we came at last to a tundra vast and dark and grim and lone;
And there was the little lone moose trail, and we knew it for our own.
By muskeg hollow and #&%!$-head it wandered endlessly;
Sorry of heart and sore of foot, weary men were we.
The short-lived sun had a leaden glare and the darkness came too soon,
And stationed there with a solemn stare was the pinched, anaemic moon.
Silence and silvern solitude till it made you dumbly shrink,
And you thought to hear with an outward ear the things you thought to think.

Oh, it was wild and weird and wan, and ever in camp o' nights
We would watch and watch the silver dance of the mystic Northern Lights.
And soft they danced from the Polar sky and swept in primrose haze;
And swift they pranced with their silver feet, and pierced with a blinding blaze.
They danced a cotillion in the sky; they were rose and silver shod;
It was not good for the eyes of man--'twas a sight for the eyes of God.
It made us mad and strange and sad, and the gold whereof we dreamed
Was all forgot, and our only thought was of the lights that gleamed.






Oh, the tundra sponge it was golden brown, and some was a bright blood-red;
And the reindeer moss gleamed here and there like the tombstones of the dead.
And in and out and around about the little trail ran clear,
And we hated it with a deadly hate and we feared with a deadly fear.
And the skies of night were alive with light, with a throbbing, thrilling flame;
Amber and rose and violet, opal and gold it came.
It swept the sky like a giant scythe, it quivered back to a wedge;
Argently bright, it cleft the night with a wavy golden edge.
Pennants of silver waved and streamed, lazy banners unfurled;
Sudden splendors of sabres gleamed, lightning javelins were hurled.
There in our awe we crouched and saw with our wild, uplifted eyes
Charge and retire the hosts of fire in the battlefield of the skies.

But all things come to an end at last, and the muskeg melted away,
And frowning down to bar our path a muddle of mountains lay.
And a gorge sheered up in granite walls, and the moose trail crept betwixt;
'Twas as if the earth had gaped too far and her stony jaws were fixt.
Then the winter fell with a sudden swoop, and the heavy clouds sagged low,
And earth and sky were blotted out in a whirl of driving snow.

We were climbing up a glacier in the neck of a mountain pass,
When the Dago Kid slipped down and fell into a deep crevasse.
When we got him out one leg hung limp, and his brow was wreathed with pain,
And he says: "'Tis badly broken, boys, and I'll never walk again.
It's death for all if ye linger here, and that's no cursed lie;
Go on, go on while the trail is good, and leave me down to die."
He raved and swore, but we tended him with our uncouth, clumsy care.
The camp-fire gleamed and he gazed and dreamed with a fixed and curious stare.
Then all at once he grabbed my gun and he put it to his head,
And he says: "I'll fix it for you, boys"--them are the words he said.

So we sewed him up in a canvas sack and we slung him to a tree;
And the stars like needles stabbed our eyes, and woeful men were we.
And on we went on our woeful way, wrapped in a daze of dream,
And the Northern Lights in the crystal nights came forth with a mystic gleam.
They danced and they danced the devil-dance over the naked snow;
And soft they rolled like a tide upshoaled with a ceaseless ebb and flow.
They rippled green with a wondrous sheen, they fluttered out like a fan;
They spread with a blaze of rose-pink rays never yet seen of man.
They writhed like a brood of angry snakes, hissing and sulphur pale;
Then swift they changed to a dragon vast, lashing a cloven tail.
It seemed to us, as we gazed aloft with an everlasting stare,
The sky was a pit of bale and dread, and a monster revelled there.

We climbed the rise of a hog-back range that was desolate and drear,
When the Sailor Swede had a crazy fit, and he got to talking queer.
He talked of his home in Oregon and the peach trees all in bloom,
And the fern head-high, and the topaz sky, and the forest's scented gloom.
He talked of the sins of his misspent life, and then he seemed to brood,
And I watched him there like a fox a hare, for I knew it was not good.
And sure enough in the dim dawn-light I missed him from the tent,
And a fresh trail broke through the crusted snow, and I knew not where it went.
But I followed it o'er the seamless waste, and I found him at shut of day,
Naked there as a new-born babe--so I left him where he lay.


Day after day was sinister, and I fought fierce-eyed despair,
And I clung to life, and I struggled on, I knew not why nor where.
I packed my grub in short relays, and I cowered down in my tent,
And the world around was purged of sound like a frozen continent.
Day after day was dark as death, but ever and ever at nights,
With a brilliancy that grew and grew, blazed up the Northern Lights.

They rolled around with a soundless sound like softly bruised silk;
They poured into the bowl of the sky with the gentle flow of milk.
In eager, pulsing violet their wheeling chariots came,
Or they poised above the Polar rim like a coronal of flame.
From depths of darkness fathomless their lancing rays were hurled,
Like the all-combining search-lights of the navies of the world.
There on the roof-pole of the world as one bewitched I gazed,
And howled and grovelled like a beast as the awful splendors blazed.
My eyes were seared, yet thralled I peered through the parka hood nigh blind;
But I staggered on to the lights that shone, and never I looked behind.

There is a mountain round and low that lies by the Polar rim,
And I climbed its height in a whirl of light, and I peered o'er its jagged brim;
And there in a crater deep and vast, ungained, unguessed of men,
The mystery of the Arctic world was flashed into my ken.
For there these poor dim eyes of mine beheld the sight of sights--
That hollow ring was the source and spring of the mystic Northern Lights.
Then I staked that place from crown to base, and I hit the homeward trail.
Ah, God! it was good, though my eyes were blurred, and I crawled like a sickly snail.
In that vast white world where the silent sky communes with the silent snow,
In hunger and cold and misery I wandered to and fro.
But the Lord took pity on my pain, and He led me to the sea,
And some ice-bound whalers heard my moan, and they fed and sheltered me.
They fed the feeble scarecrow thing that stumbled out of the wild
With the ravaged face of a mask of death and the wandering wits of a child--
A craven, cowering bag of bones that once had been a man.
They tended me and they brought me back to the world, and here I am.

Some say that the Northern Lights are the glare of the Arctic ice and snow;
And some that it's electricity, and nobody seems to know.
But I'll tell you now--and if I lie, may my lips be stricken dumb--
It's a mine, a mine of the precious stuff that men call radium.
I'ts a million dollars a pound, they say, and there's tons and tons in sight.
You can see it gleam in a golden stream in the solitudes of night.
And it's mine, all mine--and say! if you have a hundred plunks to spare,
I'll let you have the chance of your life, I'll sell you a quarter share.
You turn it down? Well, I'll make it ten, seeing as you are my friend.
Nothing doing? Say! don't be hard--have you got a dollar to lend?
Just a dollar to help me out, I know you'll treat me white;
I'll do as much for you some day . . . God bless you, sir; good-night.


Robert Service (1874 - 1958)”

“One cold winter night, I watched the Northern Lights Dance over the Neversink Reservoir (NYC water supply) located at the southern edge of the Catskill Park”

“The foreloopers of Unrest on the lone moose trail.

Can you dig it? I knew that you could.”

“The best Northern lights I saw were unexpected, too. A 10 p.m. Walmart run and on the way home I saw lights just racing across the northern half of the sky. Sleep plans changed and I went farther out into the country, where it was even darker, and watched (and attempted -- and failed -- to photograph)

Also, one year I saw just a bright ray of light going from the horizon straight up to the heavens. It was in the vicinity of Christmas, so I thought, hmmmm, is another holy child being born??? lol”

“I have lust in my heart for the aurora, but I've never seen it.”

“You and me both, Tilt! It's a strong yearning I have...”

“I thought I read somewhere that the lights can be accompanied by some sort of audible sounds. Does anyone know this to be true or not?”

“Creaky bed springs emanating from the Aurora, Bit?”

“hmm...”