Last weekend, Juneau gave us the show of our lives! I’ve been waiting for the aurora since we got here. I’ve read about it, visited all the notification sites and waited for news on a facebook page that gives realtime updates on aurora sightings all over Alaska. And we finally witnessed it from where we are. So, who (or what, but I like referring to it as a who) is this aurora that people (photographers, especially) keep on chasing around? According to Wikipedia, “an Aurora is a natural light display in the sky particularly in the high latitude regions, caused by the collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high altitude atmosphere; In northern latitudes, the effect is known as the aurora borealis (or the northern lights), named after the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek name for the north wind, Boreas, by Pierre Gassendi in 1621.”

I’ve been gazing out our bedroom window every night whenever it was clear, to check if the lights were out. Finally, Sam’s boss called on an early Friday evening to inform us that he could see the aurora from where he was. We immediately rushed out of the house in our cold gear with our camera in tow. It was breathtaking! Literally. It was so dark and cold that we fumbled with the camera at first, but thanks to this kind man we met, he taught us how to set our camera right and invited us to join the Juneau Photo Club. Here are some of the shots that Sam took: