Yellowknife V: Green Fire in the Sky

Northern Lights over Yellowknife

After a good night’s rest (Wonderful!), I looked through the rest of my photos and decided to share this picture from my last night in Yellowknife with you. I took wonderful pictures up north, but I somehow feel this was not my last time hunting for the lights!

Yellowknife IV: Last Day and Night

View from Yellowstone's Pilot Monument

Yellowknife sure wanted to leave a good impression on my last day and night there! We had a wonderful sunny day, almost no wind, and temperatures up to 16 °F / -9 °C. As I didn’t have that many pictures from the night before to go through, I decided to spend some time enjoying the weather and getting some daylight pictures of Yellowknife as well. The shot above shows the view from the Pilot Monument over some of Yellowknife’s Old Town out over the North Arm of the Great Slave Lake. Also a great spot to shoot the lights, but only if temperatures and wind permits…

When I checked the forecasts later in the afternoon, they actually weren’t too bad: moderate solar activity. And the skies sure did light up last night! That was my best northern lights night yet! The aurora was not just some cloudlike whitish mass only revealing its green light to the camera. It did show some greenish and even reddish tones and you could even see it dance and flicker across the night sky! What a great spectacle!!! I stayed outside as long as temperatures permitted (-1 °F / -17 °C).

I got almost two hours of sleep before I had to get to the airport. I am kind of amazed at with how little sleep I still function. Not at my best probably, but there is time to catch up with my night’s rest this weekend. I am posting this from Edmonton airport where I have a five hours layover. I will go through the rest of my photographs hopefully some time this weekend (should I not spend it sleeping non-stop…) and will post a little more then. So I close this with a hearty thank you to Yellowknife, the wonderful people there who have made me feel like being at home, and the solar winds for being just strong enough to lightening up the sky so beautifully!