The Skies

The skies are getting darker! On our roadtrip we never really saw darkness. At most, we saw twilight. The same was true when we first arrived in Fairbanks. We went to bed pretty early even when we were staying with Mike, Laura's adviser. Every night as we laid in bed we could see sunlight shining through the blinds (even though it was after 10), and we never woke up early enough to see darkness in the morning. However that is officially changing. Just look at the time schedule - it's changed so much since the 18th, when we arrived!

Sunset changed from just after 10 on our first day, to 9:22 tonight!

This weekend, I saw a lot of darkness. The amount of time for it to actually get dark after sunset is changing, too. Even when sunset was at 10 it would stay light til 11. But now that sunset is around 9:30, it is near pitch black by 10. Crazy!

Since I was watching TV I reverted to a later schedule - staying up until midnight or 1 am. (The 'just one more episode' mentality!). Every night I looked out the windows to see what I could see in the sky. It is absolutely amazing how dark it is out there at night! There was mild light polution from Fairbanks, but despite that it was so completely dark that you could not see anything beneath the trees. It was cloudy outside, so there was no light from the moon or stars. Unfortunately, those clouds also meant that there was no aurora to see.

Speaking of clouds, it has been cloudy from that fire that we noticed when we first drove in. There have been occasional days where it is smokey enough that it smells like smoke, and you have low visability.

But yesterday, for the first time, there was no smoke or clouds. And you know what? Apparently there is a mountain range to the south of campus, because as we were driving home we saw a large, snowy range off in the not so distant distance. In fact, we could see far off in many directions, to hills and neighborhoods far away. Very cool.

Last night we went out with some new geology friends, and we didn't get home until after 1am. And you know what we saw? Stars! For the first time! We didn't see any aurora though - probably due to low solar activity. Once we got home we tried to see the stars some more, but based on where the trees and cabin are, we mostly saw the cloudy half of the sky.

So we still have yet to see the aurora, however the skies are still changing! And I have hope to see the aurora one day soon!!