Enchanted April

Northern lights as seen above Alaska, after months of generally low aurora activity in the night sky. From the photographer: “It began in April, 2010. The long dry spell of incredibly poor aurora displays came to a spectacular end! Finally night after night there were auroras, there seemed to be no end in sight. It was like a visual feast after a visual famine. It felt so good to see the sky lit up again, even though there are only about 7 hours dark enough to film each night. The auroras were quite soft that evening, and rather slow moving, compared to evenings were they rage across the skies with fast moving razor shape edges cutting through the darkness. I suppose you could call these the blurry auroras, and rarely an ‘edge’ of any kind ever appeared anywhere in the sky. But shooting with 6 second exposures, what ended up on ‘film’ was virtually identical to what one could see with their eyes, as the auroras were slow enough not to ‘blur’ the image in the camera. The softness seen was the softness filmed. April 2010 really seemed to be the Enchanted April we all have been waiting for. The spell had been broken, and the sky once again began to dance.”