If you go back far enough in my blog you will read about the time I could not find the top of Murphy Dome.   The entry is here and is one more shining example of how my adventures turn out.  “Always an adventure!”
Yesterday I decided to try to find it and scout it out in the daytime in order to go out that night since the conditions were supposed to be good for aurora.  After driving over 25 miles from my house, I (finally) found the top of Murphy Dome!
I stopped at a couple of places to take pictures, thinking I would head back later that night and wanted to know where I should try to shoot from since there are power lines that run though the middle of what is otherwise spectacular scenery and it’s hard to know the power lines are there at night unless you’ve seen them in the daylight. Â So I tromped though snow, following moose trails, finding some kind of animal tracks and taking pictures of the amazing White Mountains to one side of the dome and of Denali in the Alaska Range to the other side.
After posting in my aurora group about the good aurora conditions and the fact that I had found the top of Murphy Dome and was therefore excited about heading up, a few trusted local photographers made comments about the fact that the combination of the lights of the radar station and the potential crowds that headed up there would most likely make for less than lovely pictures or a great experience.  That coupled with a bit of a headache that I was still fighting from a combination of being out so late on Thursday night and fighting the urge to cry all the time left a damper on my spirit. Instead of heading out I watched Ronn’s cam and saw a bit of green band, but I never saw lights from my house so I gave up. I went on the porch a couple of times and my camera picked up a tiny band, but I could not see it with the naked eye and I just didn’t feel like heading out.
To be fair to the aurora, my house faces south mostly and there is a street light on the north side so the aurora needs to be bright and pretty high in the sky for me to see it.
Images taken with a Sony a6000 and a Rokinon 12 wide angle lens. Â I’m pretty sure I should have swapped out for at least the kit lens since everything looks so much further away in the pictures than they did in person. Â If I recall a conversation from the aurora chasers group, in general the eye sees at 50mm so to bring something closer, like the mountains, would need a lens with a larger number than 50 and 12 is definitely not in that category. Â Live and learn I guess.
