I didn’t see the Northern Lights again last night. I saw the Big Dipper, almost directly over my house, the Pleiades, I think, and maybe Mars. A sliver of moon, so bright for how small it was, and the distant smudge of the Milky Way. It was a warm night, and windy, and I was barefoot, the concrete was still warm from the heat of the day. I looked twice, once around 11pm and again at 2am. At 2am there was a milky glow coming from the north which might have been downtown Seattle or maybe it was the aurora, I don’t know.
It is increasingly rare the skies are so very clear. We are a cloud and or fog covered city but for the last five years, perhaps longer, hot days have meant smog or smoke. Last night reminded me of my first summers here when I would be outside late at night under the deep blue inverted bowl of the heavens. It was a 90s summer sky in the middle of 20s May.
It was hugely disappointing to not see the big showing of Friday night’s Northern Lights. Over the course of Saturday I learned many of the photos we’ve seen are the enhanced interpretation of phones and cameras, a collective augmented reality experience, especially those from places like my city where we have so much light pollution. The enhanced longer exposures aren’t false — that shit is happening! — but those images aren’t the same as what people saw with their own eyes. I talked with a neighbor who told me she didn’t realize the extent of the aurora until she’d seen the photos. Another friend said she saw it but thought it was fog and went back to bed. Your mileage may vary significantly, I guess, based on location, light pollution, device though which you viewed the phenomenon, etcetera ad infinitum amen.
It’s all made me very philosophical. I’m grappling with the FOMO (fear of missing out) I felt on Friday night — I looked! I did! But I was just using my eyes and it wasn’t enough. I’m ruminating on the implications of a technology enhanced experience — to be clear, I’m for it! — and what it means if you have to look at your pictures afterwards to see the thing you couldn’t see with the naked eye. I’m also thinking about the invisible magic happening around us all the time because we don’t have good ways to see it, or don’t know how, or, ahem, refuse to allow science to help us experience the world in new and exciting ways.
There’s more. I didn’t get to see this particular display, but as with the recent eclipse, I have big feelings about so many people gathering to observe the majesties and mysteries of the universe. Here we are on this spinning rock hurling at 67,000 miles per hour through space and so many of us have gone outside to look at the sky.
I have seen the Northern Lights and two near total eclipses, so as much as I regret missing this recent solar trip, I’m less disappointed than I might be had I never had the opportunity. I have also had the pleasure of visiting places with very dark night skies, places where the stars alone are the full show.
On Friday afternoon we had a very low tide. I rode my bike to the park and squelched around the tidal flats for an hour. I saw a few bright purple starfish, a giant mustard colored sea anemone, a baseball sized moon snail shell, a very active red crab. A bunch of teenagers were turning over rocks and exclaiming with delight over every single hermit crab. Up on a sandy patch, some women were laughing while the clams spit seawater toward them in tiny fountains. It is low tide season, there are a series of them through the end of July and I try to go as often as I can. This time, the beach was not crowded but I know the summer lows will have the shoreline packed with curious humans looking for things we cannot usually see. We will all find different things but years of this experience has taught me we are universally delighted by what we do find.
Tides are controlled by the moon, the aurora by the sun, and all of it reminds us we’re on the pale blue dot. Here we all are, so small, gravity and chemistry determining our days. We do not always get to see what we have set out to see, but there is something so thrilling in how many people are taking the time to look.