Wordless Wednesday

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Wordless Wednesday

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Wordless Wednesday

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Night Lights

10 October 2024

I've longed for clear skies when aurora borealis has been forecasted for my area since May of 2024, when I caught my first glimpse of very pale pink in the night sky. We finally enjoyed full-fledged northern lights in October of last year. Best night of my life!

1 June 2025

We've had many chances during this solar maximum for the last 13 months. On the best viewing nights, however, we're either overcast (of which I can't complain because we need the rain) and/or Lizard isn't up for a road trip to break free from cloud cover.

1 June 2025

Areas outside Denver's obnoxious light pollution got amazing views Sunday night. Some areas enjoyed dancing colors in the sky Saturday night, too. I couldn't see even faint color, thanks to Denver city lights.

31 May 2025

On a whim, I decided to see if my cell phone could pick up the Milky Way. I'd tried back in 2018 with a real camera, and light pollution pretty much killed that attempt. It was fun to reminisce that night with Lizard. That was a week before his Parkinson's diagnosis. We knew something was wrong, but we didn't know yet what. We were trying to make the best of it, just in case the diagnosis turned out to be ALS.

11 August 2018

I'd forgotten to take a real camera with me this time. All I had was my cell phone. I tried a couple of shots, then came home to heavily edit them. I couldn't believe how awesome the shot turned out, even though it needed a ton of manipulation and isn't the clearest or best Milky Way shot. It turned my night of disappointment into the most giddy feeling I've had since the October northern lights!

1 June 2025

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better luck next time

I knew we had a good chance of northern lights in Colorado on New Year's Eve, but Lizard wasn't comfortable taking a drive when all the "crazies" and "drunks" would be out in force. Parkinson's often comes with a good dose of anxiety. I've learned to modify my dreams and goals to help make his life as pleasant as possible.

We had too much cloud cover and metro city light to view the aurora borealis from home this time around.

I stepped out in the very light snow on our driveway about six times throughout the night, just in case.

I'm so thankful we have the technology (and internet bandwidth!!!) to be able to enjoy the northern lights whenever they happen!

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Highs, Lows and Aurora Borealis

I think I'm going to have to crochet a new color Northern Lights Snowflake! I bet we get northern lights here in Colorado at least one more time this year! Meanwhile, I sure had fun making blocks for my 2024 digital temperature quilts after actually seeing and successfully photographing northern lights dark and early Monday morning!

The Aurora app on my phone notified me twice very late Sunday night/extremely early Monday morning (and again Monday afternoon, during full daylight) that we had reached K7, which meant low latitude northern lights!!!

The first time, Lizard was still pacing the floor, unable to sleep. I asked if he'd like to go east with me so we could get away from the light polution of the Denver metro north of us, the same direction we'd have to look to see the northern lights. Anxiety is a huge part of Parkinson's, and he was too nervous about going out in the dark, so we went to a nearby hill and crossed our fingers. I could see the northern lights movement with my naked eye, but we didn't get great shots. The cell phone, which actually does a good job with northern lights because it sees more of the light spectrum than we can, just doesn't have a powerful enough zoom. The point and shoot doesn't see everything we see, and even enhanced via Photoshop, it's difficult to see the full color scale we saw with our eyes and thoroughly enjoyed watching for a few minutes.

The second time the notification alarm went off, I woke, but Lizard didn't. I didn't feel like I could leave him home alone long enough to drive and shoot, and there was no way I was going to wake him from a good slumber. So I stepped out onto our front porch with my phone, and my eyes about popped out of my head!!! I could see pink and green, and pretty high in the sky to boot! I was in heaven!

I moved down to the driveway and shot about four frames, uploaded the best one to my community group on Facebook, then went back to bed. The next morning, I downloaded the point and shoot, then tried enhancing both the cell phone and 35mm photos with Photoshop and AI. I created a collage illustrating of the difference between the two cameras and the two different northern lights occurences in my neck of the plains meet foothills. I'm still overjoyed I finally got to see northern lights in person!!! I'll never turn down an opportunity to see them live in person further north (or south, as in Antarctica), but I feel so blessed I got to see them this time around!

I think I dreamed the rest of the night (or, I guess, very early morning) about how I could interpret this celestial event in my digital quilts.

I dug out the old snowflakes made back in... oh, my gosh! 14 years ago!!! Photographed them on the appropriate colors, and I digitally quilted the newest blocks.

Sometimes it feels a bit like pressure to have to keep going with all this year's digital temperature quilts. But after another day of something special, man, I can't wait to see these printed on fabric at the end of the year! The blue is going to make the most awesome dress, I think!

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Friday Fantastic

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