December 10, 2007
This contemporary conversation reported three weeks ago between two customers at a printer’s shop in Juneau, Alaska regarding this remarkable photograph, illustrates vividly that we are still profoundly confused about aurora:**
Woman: Oh! That’s GORGEOUS! Is that the “green flash”?
Photographerr’s Wife: No, it’s the sub-visual aurora.
Woman: No, my friend told me that at 5PM you can see a green flash right where the sun is setting.
Photographer’s Wife: No, the green flash occurs closer to the equator, not up here, plus…
Woman: No, my friend said he’d seen it before.
Photographer’s Wife: OK, see the glacier? When you are looking at that glacier from that angle you are looking north, and also? we are too far north for the greenflash, and also? that’s taken at midnight.
Woman: Are you SURE?
Printer: Yeah, I think she’s sure.
**Courtesy of April McVay