Every winter, tourists come here to Fairbanks, AK from far away to see the Aurora Borealis. If they don't see it, they often come back and try their luck again. I've lived here now six years and I can only think of two times that I have watched the aurora, until last night. 
I am embarrased to say that I never think look for it. When it's dark, I think of sleeping, and when I get into bed, our blinds are often closed still from the daytime when the light is so intense that I do not look outside. But, last night, I had a tip from a friend in MN, and I saw them loud and clear. I watched the aurora from my bedroom window on and off for 8 hours, and it was stupendous. They danced the sky in every direction except in the SW. The main band crossed directly over my house from NW to SE. These photos taken through my bedroom window are directly W.
I surprised myself when I turned off my DSLR camera's auto focus, and, on manual setting, set the aperture to 1.8, the largest I've got, snapped a photo and saw GREEN! It worked. Unfortunately, sometime soon after we purchased the camera in the time of my first pregnancy, house building, and a lot of other chaos, we lost the connection between the camera and the tripod and we never got around to replacing it. So, the blur you see in the stars is me holding the camera still with my own two hands for 5 seconds--not ideal.
This experience insprired me to do some reading, and I was on the right track with the camera. I am now on the notification list for future aurora activity through our Geophysical Institute, so I hope to show you something amazing in the future. We are about 20 minutes from the Chena Flood Plain, and I hear that's a great place for a 360 view (unobstructed by my house or the trees to my E).
The first 3 photos were each taken exactly 1 minute apart, which sure goes to show how dynamic the aurora is. The 4th photo was taken 8 hours later, at 4am. I see that the big swirl was at 3:30am, when the baby had not yet awakened me. Just missed it! Plus, looks like I'll need a fish eye for my camera to get a shot like that!
Inspiring!
