Northern Lights - Indescribable

So this is the kind of post to make people jealous: NORTHERN LIGHTTTSSSS

We had managed to catch them on our first night in Kiruna on 4th March. The sky was clear, the moon was only a crescent, and the lights were supposedly on moderate intensity.

On a not so good note, it was freakdunkulously cold. In fact, I actually got a mild case of frost bite and I couldn't walk properly on the way back to the hostel because my heels were swollen. So, one night's enough for me heh.

I didn't have a camera good enough for this, so I'm just going to post the ones that Kenelm spent hours in the bitter cold taking.

Let me also disclaim that the northern lights look a lot better on camera than the naked eye, because it basically captures the intensity of any light and overlaps it for 30 seconds. So take the colours that you see and divide it by like 3000 or something.

 The nicest and most intense photo that Kenelm took

This best captures what I remember of what I saw, and reminds me of the term 'City on a Hill'. Basically, imagine that there's a black mountain in front of you, and there's a city on the other side of the town. From where you are, you can see a small stream of light emanating from the city. And the lights would move up and down and around. That's how I would describe seeing the Northern Lights.

Sometimes, we would get to see the lights sway around.

Sometimes dance around. 'Spots' of light appearing and different times.

Green and red hues. Though, we couldn't really see the red parts.

The Northern Lights are actually the result of collisions between gaseous particles in the Earth's atmosphere with charged particles released from the sun's atmosphere. Variations in colour are due to the type of gas particles that are colliding. The most common auroral color, a pale yellowish-green, is produced by oxygen molecules located about 60 miles above the earth. Rare, all-red auroras are produced by high-altitude oxygen, at heights of up to 200 miles. Nitrogen produces blue or purplish-red aurora

http://www.northernlightscentre.ca/northernlights.html

On top of the lights, what was more amazing was the starry starry night sky. You can actually see it in the background of the photos above. The sky was dark and filled with TONS and TONS of stars like glitter on a (talented) little girl's art piece.

                         

Taken from Google, but close enough

Couldn't help it, but 'Indescribable' was playing in my head so much that night.
Indescribable, uncontainable,
You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name.
You are amazing God

At some point, I was thinking "Wow, God has really created such wonderful things to enjoy". And the 'City on the Hill' thing got me thinking that heaven must be a wonderful place, beyond what I can imagine.