Tag Archives: northern lights

Aurora Borealis on the Dalton

Nice aurora pics, John Slater!

Northern lights & Davidson Ditch

Here are more photos of our late summer camping trip up the Steese Highway.  Chilly, but hardly a cloud in the sky…

You’ll see Davidson Ditch, a water pipe built in 1920s, that runs 90 miles along the Steese Highway.  It used to bring  about 180,000 gallons of water per day to the gold dredges in Fox, Alaska from the Chatanika River.

(Click on the first one and scroll to the right.)

Sitting around our campfire, the northern lights decided to give us a show.
Jack, lovin’ life.
An ember from the fire timed itself perfect for our long shutter speed.
The Steese Highway, one of the less populated camping destinations.
There are several nice roadside memorials on Alaskan highways, but we both agree this is the best one we’ve seen.
It’s only late August, but that means fall up here, about 60 miles north of Fairbanks.
Even farther north at Twelvemile Summit Wayside (about 80 mile Steese).
Probably the best time to drive the Steese Highway, late summer.
State camp, Montana Creek Station (road maintenance station).
Lots of mining on the Steese Highway.
And lots of burnt forest.
Davidson Ditch snakes its way to Fox, Alaska (about 8 miles north of Fairbanks).
Davidson Ditch is practically in this house’s back yard.
Chatanika Lodge, a most important place to visit if you come to Alaska. Tons of interesting stuff in there. About 40 mile Steese Highway.
This is directly across from Chatanika Lodge, a very old mining site with a gold dredge (on the right) that used to float.

Jack’s Northern Lights Shots

Not sure if you’ve ever tried to take a digital photo of the northern lights but it will most likely turn out grainy unless you have a very expensive camera (or you know some really good tricks and in that case please share!).  So I took 9 of Jack’s aurora shots and put them together in thumbnails after running digital camera noise removal on them a couple of times.  If you don’t know what this means don’t worry about it, but the shots turned out kind of surreal.  Click on the image below and check it out.

You can see the side mirror in one of them – he obviously took the top 3 from the truck.  The bottom 6 shots show one formation getting larger from at first just a wisp in the sky.  The northern lights are a winter-only phenomenon for us since in the summer it’s light throughout the night, from May until August.  This awesome kind of sighting is a big perk for us in the winter, and boy do we deserve it after months of bitter cold and darkness.

Click here for a couple more shots of northern lights – these taken from our house.  Have a great week!