Southern lights

As my brother rightly reminded me, I went all the way to Iceland for a northern lights tour and saw nothing, only to see them this week in my back garden in Cornwall. There must be a metaphor or saying there somewhere. 

I have been wanting to see the northern nights – or aurora borealis to give it its Latin name, coined by the iconic Italian astronomer Galieo in 1619 and meaning ‘northern dawn’ (aurora being the Roman goddess of dawn; it’s got more exciting names in other languages; in Finnish, for example, it translates as ‘fox fires’) – for some years now, usually only finding out about them the following morning on social media. This time I got a WhatsApp message with photos from a friend at 9:30pm saying “I hope you’re outside seeing this”. Of course I was in bed but soon donned wellies and braved the bedraggled garden to witness the display.

Well, I say witnessed but what we saw was very pale in comparison to what the camera saw. We saw a pale, green-grey mist, the camera saw a vibrant riot of colour. Due to the sensitivity of cameras and their long exposure modes, more colour can be picked up, whereas the details are too dim for our eyes. The colours are in the sky, apparently, they just need some coaxing out with a camera. Anyway, it was a beautiful night, the sky full of stars and we heard owls twit-twooing to each other.

The aurora borealis reminds me of infrared photography, which I have done a lot of. Likewise, the infrared colours are there, it’s just they’re beyond the visible spectrum, and it takes a filter or a modified camera to reveal the infrared light.