Two Great Shows, No Admission Fee.

Two great shows took place up here last night.

Overhead, we had a display of Northern Lights. Notoriously hard to photograph, the display was far beyond the capability of my little camera, so thanks to Wade Clark Jr. for this photo.

The lights had the whole northern horizon glowing, and then rose in long pale green 'searchlights' up the sky. The colors are determined by the gases in the Earth's atmosphere and incoming solar particles which tend to collide with different gases at different heights.

If it's very high up (above 300 km / 185 miles), oxygen is the most common gas, and collisions there can create a rare red aurora. We have seen these here, but not in years. They are truly breathstopping.
The more common yellow-to-green light we saw last night is produced by collisions with oxygen at lower altitudes (between 100-300 km / 60-185 miles).

Sometimes the lights seem to have a lower fringe that is reddish in colour. That's at around 100 km / 60 miles, where nitrogen molecules produce a red 'base' to the higher displays.

Really high up, lighter gases, like hydrogen and helium, make blue and purple colors, but we cannot always see them in the night sky. But the action was not all overhead...

In the streams, the smelt were running. This is an annual event, when these slender, silver fish swarm up the creeks to spawn. Female can produce 12,000 to 50,000 eggs, which sink to the bottom of the creek, and then after hatching drift back to the lake on the current.

Often called Rainbow smelt, because in the water their bodies flash with rainbow colours, as soon as you take them out of the water, they are silver. Some folk really enjoy them as a meal, often grilled whole. I remember going to the creeks in spring with my father, to watch the fish run. The creeks could be almost jammed up with fish -- so thick you could scoop them out with your hands. My friend Jackie was out last night with her sons, smelting, and tells me the stream was thick with fish.

The spawning run happens in the spring -- about know, and principally during darkness. So if you see folks hovering around the creek beds with flashlights as you travel around, you'll know what's up!

Or should we say, what's down? To know what's up, look to the sky, and cross your fingers for the Northern Lights. Looking down, hold your breath for the rainbow shimmer of the smelt running in the clear waters. Two shows, unbeatable... right here in our big backyard.