Day 19-aurora borealis (and cupcakes)

   January 23-A "coronal mass ejection associated with a long-duration solar flare" (as explained by the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks) occurred on January 19, and the energetic ions from the flare were supposed to hit the Earth on the night of January 22/23.  The night was clear, so we were very interested in trying to see some northern lights.  The Sun's orientation with the Earth matters for the northern lights, and they tend to be most active on the side of the Earth opposite the Sun, or during midnight.  So, I had dutifully set the alarm for 12:30 am when I went to bed on the off-chance I might see something.  I did:

Orion is standing just above the horizon on the left side of this picture.  The orangish pink glow you see at the bottom of some of the pictures are street lights.

      I woke the whole family and we got quite the light show.  Spencer only stayed up for about five minutes, but the girls were transfixed for half an hour and the adults did not go to bed until nearly 2 am.  "Northern" lights is a bit of a misnomer here; these pictures were taken out of our apartment towards the south and there were transient light displays in all directions.  The kids expected the aurora borealis to be a bit more dynamic based on time-lapse videos they have seen before.  The lights did change minute-to-minute and there were a few instances where we saw a pulses of brightness run through the displays over the course of a few seconds.  Overall, I think that everyone was thrilled to get the chance to see this amazing phenomenon.  We might get more chances as well.  The 11 year cycle of solar activity is predicted to peak in February, 2013, so these sorts of solar flares should only occur more frequently over the next few months.  In fact, later on Monday another coronal mass ejection occurred that is supposed to hit the Earth on the evening of the 24th, so we will be watching for the results from that one as well.  Some of these more energetic displays may even be visible in the lower-48.  If you are interested, check at http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ and http://www.gi.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast/2 for predictions every day or so, because once a solar flare is seen, it takes only a couple days for the solar wind to carry it to the Earth's orbit.  Also, if you want to see these pictures better, I just found out that if you click on pictures in the blog, they will load as larger pictures.  Enjoy!

   As you might imagine, everyone was dragging when the alarm again went off at 7 am, but the ladies and Spencer all got out the door and off to their respective schools on time.  At 5:09 (exactly!) that evening the girls and I were welcomed into the gönguklúbbur, or hiking club.  Every Monday the hiking club gets together and hikes to some place near campus.  We crossed the ring road (highway 1) and plowed through the snow-covered golf course to get the Glanni waterfall.  By the time we got there, it was too dark for any pictures, but we shall return and get some shots of it.  After the girls donned their headlamps, we returned to Bifröst via a different route and this time walked through a tunnel under the highway, which was almost as exciting as the waterfall for the kids.

   Sally and Spencer had supper ready for us when we returned.  There is nothing like a nice, hot soup (bacon and potato; yum!) to warm you up after an hour and a half, freezing hike.  After supper, we got to enjoy some of Alex's schoolwork.  Icelandic schools put almost as much emphasis on practical, household skills as they do academics, and Alex had been in cooking class today, where she and a partner made these yummy (and dense) chocolate cupcakes.  Alex apparently saved the day when she stopped Krístján, her baking partner, from mixing up the sugar and the salt in the recipe!  Interestingly, the recipe the class followed used American measuring units of cups, tablespoons, and teaspoons rather metric units.