We're all better off being attuned to the world we inhabit, and I so deeply love when people are brought together watching an eclipse, or a comet, or just a big storm. I never dared to hope for an aurora visible from the center of my home city of Chicago.
This photo was taken from Promontory Point on Chicago's southside, not long after sunset, as a major solar storm hit the Earth's atmosphere and put on an amazing show. It's worth emphasizing this is a photo that gathered a few seconds of light into one frame, so this is a little brighter and a little more vibrant than it looked in real life -- although an Aurora visible with the naked eye to any extent, from a major North American city, is an event worth celebrating. But on that same account, this is the result of a machine in my hands capturing photons ejected when solar particles slammed into our atmosphere, and that's just cool.