Whitehorse

Watching Noorthern Lights

Now here's the main topic. I boked a whole house in suburban area. You can make a reservation for renting a house in same manner as booking a hotel room and the cost is similar. I rented a house in a farm. The owner appeared with her horse to give an instruction. There is a fully equipped kitchen, bedroom, and shower room for the guests. There is a stable on the side of the house for her horses sleeping at nights. 2nd floor looks a storage. It seems that the owner family used the house in past and serves as a guest house now. White birches surround the house and there is no light or sound at night except for cars running on a neighbor highway. I waited for northern lights at a space in front of the house.

Wait overnight for northern lights and go to bed at sunrise. Wake up around noon and start activities. I repeated the cyce for 4 days. According to this routine, sleeping timing is same as Japan and I am not bothered by jet lag.

　For the 1st day, I did not see any northern lights. Focusing on the sky was even difficult because of thick clouds covering stars. I mainly stayed inside drinking local beers and sometimes went outside to check the sky.

There are only clouds in the entire sky.

I just waited with drinking local beers stocked in a big refrigerator.

Beers here are not sold individually, but sold in a pack of 4 tall cans.

2nd day. The camera was put on the tripod and left outside. I drank beers inside and sometimes went outside to see the night sky. I suddenly see bright northern lights at around 1 am when I went outside and was rushed to start taking pictures. A view from the camera screen showed clear green color than human eyes. Those came me up with an idea to keep taking timelapse shots toward the sky with less clouds even if I didn't see northern lights in my eyes. After continuing timelapse, northern lights appeared again just before sunrise. I was lucky to see northern lights even for a brief time.

This was the time I saw northern lights for the first time in my life. This was the most intense northern lights in this travel. I failed to focus on the sky because I was in a hurry to take the picture.

Northern lights became invisible in my eyes after about 15 minutes, but my camera could capture them for a while after that.

I made my camera keep working until next morning. I observed green lights on the camera screen at the end of timelapse movie immediately after finishing the timelapse shots. I could still see green color through the camera when I trained the camera to the sky and took pictures. It was just before sunrise.

3rd day was not fruitful. Light green sky was occasionally observed. The sky kept covered with thick clouds. Then I had nothing to do except for drinking beer ^^; There are 3 local breweries in a small city of Whitehorse. 2 of them sell canned beers. There are many kinds of ale beer similar to local breweries in the U.S.. My favorite is IPA and tried every available kind of IPA.

Left: Winterlong Brewery, Right: Yukon Brewing. They offer many kinds of ales and can design is identical in each manufacturer. The taste does not too appealing but is balanced well. IPAs can be drunk smoothly.

Sweet potatoes have orange colors different from Japanese species. They become sweet only with steamed. In Japan, when we call "sweet potato" as its pronunciation, it means a baked sweet potato cake which consists of sweet potato, butter, egg and sugar. The sweet potato cake seems not common out of Japan.

I even picked a beer not produced in Whitehorse. This beer comes from local brewery near Vancouver. I got to know there are many breweries around Vancouver too.

The last day. Forecasts were telling that northern lights belts became most intense and there were less clouds. I fired myself up to drink beer... no, to watch the night sky carefully. At this time I could judge which is clouds or northern lights by their pattern even when the colors are not visible in my eyes. The green colors became clear through the camera screen from around 4am. And northern lights arched in the night sky at 5am. The color was little visible in human eyes but the arching pattern varied on a moment-to-moment and lasted until the morning.

I have been frustrated without finding northern lights even in midnight. However, unique clear lines appeared in the sky at around 4am.

A part of arching northern lights: It gradually changed their shape with wavering. It was not possible to take a photo of the entire arch with the ground because of the performance of the lens. I already knew that wide-angle lens are more appropriate in this situation but gave up to buy the lens because they were too expensive.

The lights have weakened but lasted until the morning.

　Here is a edited timelapse movie for the 4 days.

（Updated；10.9.2023）