Aurora Borealis
I’ve seen the Aurora Borealis before, over my house, Einar, on Westray.
I’ve only ever seen the green arc of the lights before. It was magical to witness.
Tonight there’s meant to be a better show, so I go out at midnight and look to the north. There’s a green arc. By the time I’ve popped inside to get my phone to take some photographs there’s a spectacular show going on.
There is a huge green arc across the whole of the northern sky. Above it is an intense pink and red band high into the sky. Running through it are ‘searchlight’ white beams. They ripple and move, growing and fading in intensity.
It’s incredible.
I can see Ursa Major, the Great Bear, which always looks like a saucepan with a long handle to me rather than The Plough of its alternative name. How many people know what a plough looks like nowadays?
The lights are shining in front of it in an ever-shifting dance.
It’s a rippling atmospheric curtain of intense light.
I have no wide-angle lens with me, so I’m going to have to make-do with iPhone photographs rather than with a larger digital camera.
They’re good enough to remember it with. What a night.