Beauty in the Sky

 On the night of October 10th, I was hosting book group at our house.  We were discussing, "Nothing to Envy:  Ordinary Lives in North Korea" by Barbara Demick.     Guests started trickling in around 8:00pm, then about 10 minutes later one of my friends arrived and announced that the Northern Lights were visible right then.   We all immediately traipsed out onto our back deck and were greeted with this sight, which was quite lovely, but there was that darn tree in our line of vision...

We were entranced enough that we wanted to see more, so we walked across the street together to see the view without the tree.   We all sat there ooohing and ahhing for about 10 minutes before it started to fade away.   Then we headed back in to discuss the book. 

After our  interesting discussion wrapped up a couple hours later, Glen and I decided to see if we could get away from the lights a bit and get another view.    These couple of  pictures were taken at Lambert Park-just a few minutes from our house.  

The streaks were just breathtaking!  

After that, we decided to try to get a little further from the lights for one more view and drove up to the Three Falls area, also not far from our home.   We found an overlook there with a good view looking north and were treated to this spectacular sight! 

The colors were vibrant and amazing (more so through the camera lens than with our eyes which only could sense a faint glow of reddish color in the sky) ...

and then the colors started to quickly fade, which was just as well, because it was past my bedtime by then and I was eager to get to bed!     😴

 

FAST FORWARD just a few days later to October 15th and we were treated to another glorious heavenly display when the Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS made its appearance on its once every 80,000 year rotation near earth!  

A neighbor had given us the head's up that the view from the top of Cemetery Hill was perfect for viewing it in the western sky, so that night we walked to the top, where we my Mom and Heather met us in their car...

It was a beautiful clear night and it delighted us all to be able to witness this comet with our naked eye!

Overall a great week for enjoying the stunning beauty  that God has created!