Summer nights in the north woods of Minnesota are something special. On clear nights the sky is dominated by the Milky Way. As you sit beneath large pine trees on the shoreline, loons call from across the lake while billions of stars twinkle overhead. And it hits you: This is a little slice of heaven. And you never want to leave.
Last night's moon setting over the Pigeon River in Ontario, Canada. Sure was a peaceful evening!
Last night after checking out the Dark Sky Caravan I went to a favorite spot on the Lake Superior shoreline to take in the view of the Milky Way. The University of Minnesota Duluth brought their GeoDome Mobile Planetarium to the Grand Portage Community Center and gave a super interesting presentation. The presentation was followed by some time gazing at the stars, moon and planets through telescopes. It was a super fun evening.
Spending some time on the shoreline taking in the view over the big lake and some islands was a perfect way to end the fun. In the photo the large, bright planet that you see reflecting in the lake over the right side of the island is Mars. The light that you see illuminating myself and some of the foreground rocks is coming from a yard light on the opposite side of the bay behind me.
I'm going through some SERIOUS Aurora withdrawals. The last good show I saw was back in early May. We're definitely due for a another good one! I've had this photo sitting on my computer desktop for quite a while with the intention of sharing it when I'm missing the northern lights. This was on June 23, 2015 at 12:23 AM over Lake Superior and Hollow Rock in Grand Portage, MN. I decided to title this one "Free Bird" because ever since I first looked at it I could see the shape of a large bird within the patterns of the lights.
We had some pretty sweet thunderstorms roll through today. When the last of them moved through this evening they left us with a sweet double rainbow over the bay. Thunderstorms are awesome :-)
Mars, the Milky Way and Jupiter line up over the island on the Lake Superior shoreline at Horseshoe Bay in Hovland, Minnesota.
While tending my plot at the community garden this evening I was pleasantly surprised when I noticed the light around me increase. The sky had been very gray but when I looked up from the plants I was shocked to see this beautiful sky full of color. There must have been an opening in the clouds to the west. The sun poked through and lit up the clouds from below. The color only last a couple of minutes then it was gone.
