Giant Ginkgo

Last week there were some amazing Auroras that were actually visible from inside the city limits of Chicago. One of my coworkers who was in Lincoln Park could actually see them when he stood on top of the tower that his apartment is in.

I would have missed the show if it hadn't been for Yu, who noticed them when she was parking the car back at her place up in the north 'burbs and called to tell me to go take a look outside. (I called Kassandra, she nearly had a heart-attack since it was so late in the evening... she thought that somebody must have died!)

My main digital camera's batteries were dead, so I didn't have a chance to take some real pictures, which is a shame because they would have been spectacular. I ended up taking a few with my little Optio S, which wasn't quite up to the task. It doesn't have the ISO and the shutter can be open for a maximum of 4 seconds. So I apologize for the crappiness of these pics! I also shot some video of the storm, if I can find a good stop-motion program I'll do a time-lapsed video. The video came out much better!