the magic night

Stunning photos from The Magic Night series. (Via Feane’s FFFFOUND!) One of the most magical moments of my life, one of those moments I know I’ll remember clearly until the day I die, is seeing the northern lights in the middle of the night as I flew over Newfoundland on the way to Italy last year. The lights undulated like a living, breathing entity, and even though I knew there was a logical explanation for the phenomenon of color and light, seeing the lights filled me with a knowing that there’s more to heaven and earth than dreamt of in my philosophy.

Another magical moment I’ll never forget is seeing the Milky Way, clearly, for the first time. We were staying at a friend’s place in on the big island in Hawaii, lounging in the spongy grass out back, paying no attention to the sky. Our friend, who had been visiting the big island since he was a little boy, turned off the outdoor lights and told us to look up at the sky. Above our heads, instead of an inky black sky with thousands of twinkling stars (like the sky you camping in the woods), the sky was a dense, silvery mass of stars, almost but not quite as bright as the second pic above. (The big island is a special place for star gazing because the Hawaiian islands are floating in the middle of the Pacific, so there’s very little light pollution, which is why the observatories on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea is one of the best locations on earth for astronomy.) If it wasn’t for the light pollution on the major continents, we’d all be able to see this silvery sight on crystal clear nights!

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Published:
7.29.08 / 10am
Category:
photography