Photography by Samantha Decker

Here’s a sight very few Saratogians have seen: the northern lights over the Oklahoma Training Track. This unlikely photograph was snapped by horse-lover and photographer Samantha Decker on the evening of May 10, when the aurora borealis (more typically spotted in areas such as the Arctic region and Northern Canada) put on a light show visible from as far south as Alabama.

“It was about 9:45pm, and I was scrolling through X,” Decker says. “I kept seeing all these posts about the northern lights being visible throughout the US. I checked my Aurora app, which tells me the likelihood of being able to see northern lights, and it said I had a 91 percent chance of seeing them.”

With clouds threatening to move in, Decker drove a mile to the Oklahoma and got what she’d hoped for: a sky lit up with purple and green. (Cameras and cell phones are better at capturing light than the naked eye, which is why so many of us missed the phenomenon.) “The sky looked amazing,” she says. “I stayed for about 45 minutes trying to capture the ever-changing colors and intensities.”