For years now, I have diligently taken myself out when there’s a chance of seeing the Aurora Borealis to stand beneath the night sky, only to get cold, tired and ultimately, give up and go home to bed. It’s the trouble with living down south. The aurora seldom reaches this far. Scotland and northern counties might well be admiring the dancing lights, but at 50º north, my chances are frustratingly slim.
But not impossible. In early September 1859, an enormous geomagnetic storm known as the Carrington Event (after Richard Carrington, who was sketching sunspots at the time of the solar flare) caused almost world-wide aurorae. The Northern Lights were seen as far south as the Caribbean, while the Southern Lights dazzled Australian gold miners in Victoria.
In August 1972, a series of powerful solar storms caused radio blackouts, satellite disruptions and accidental detonation of U.S navel mines in Vietnam. This time, the aurora was seen as far south as Bilbao in Spain, whilst along the southern coast of the U.K the Northern Lights were bright enough to cast shadows.
In March 1989, another storm struck the Earth, causing a nine hour power outage in Québec, Canada. This time, the aurora was seen as far south as Texas. Aurora was again seen in Texas in November 1991 and 2001 and October 2003. More recently, in July 2012, a coronal mass ejection (CME) which is thought to have had the same strength at the Carrington Event narrowly missed the Earth. Had it hit, it’s predicted that the economic coast to the United States would have been anything from $600 billion to $2.6 trillion.
I’m not going to get into the seriousness of such a solar event in my writing today, although I will say that, globally, we are far too lackadaisical about the possibility of CMEs and the damage they can cause. But if we think about these events from an aurora hunting perspective, and how close to the equator aurorae have been seen, the south coast of the U.K shifts from being an improbable spot to somewhere with definitive potential.
At the end of February 2023, a CME associated with an M-class solar flare (which is ten times less powerful that an X-class flare such as the Carrington Event) hit the earth’s atmosphere. I’d just started a social media hiatus, so I was unaware of the flare until I spoke to my brother-in-law on the phone. I’d already missed the first wave of activity, which had happened the previous night, but the Met Office suggested there was a strong likelihood of seeing the aurora again that evening. I immediately downloaded the Aurora Watch UK app onto my phone (why I’d never done this before is a mystery I cannot answer, but I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to try their luck at seeing the aurora) and waited for darkness. At around 6pm the app recored storm level aurora activity, but it was still too light to see anything. I packed my camera bag, had dinner and waited. At around 7.30pm, I headed out.
I cannot get the internet on my phone while I’m out of the house. Ordinarily I find this beneficial, but not being able to check an aurora app while specifically looking for the aurora is a little frustrating. My strategy, therefore, was to go somewhere fairly high up, face north, and take photos. The first hill I headed for already had a cluster of people on the top, and being an antisocial photographer, I headed to an obscure lay-by to try my luck from there instead. After about an hour without catching even the slightest glimmer, I presumed it was just another one of those evenings where I’d gone out for nothing. I packed everything away and headed home.
On the way I passed a field which faces north. There’s nothing particularly special about it, but it’s orientation encouraged me to have one more try. I set up my camera and clicked. On the horizon, the lights from Chard were causing a conspicuous glow, but above them there seemed to be the slightest tinge of green. I clicked again, leaving my shutter open for about 15 seconds to collect as much light as possible. This time, the green was topped by a faded red. I clicked again and in the next photograph I could make out faint light pillars on my camera’s display screen – tell-tale signs of the Northern Lights.
The display didn’t last long, and had I known I was definitely going to catch the aurora I would have made sure I was in a location with a better view of the horizon. This burst of activity sadly also coincided with the arrival of clouds which further blocked my view; clouds which cleared shortly after to leave a beautifully clear sky, allowing me to see a bright, slow-moving meteor at about 10.30pm. But, despite my poor location and the clouds, I did manage to capture the Northern Lights on the border of Devon and Dorset, only five miles from the coast. And as we are approaching our next solar maximum (a period of time between 2023 and 2027 when the sun is predicted to be more active) I’m hopeful that I’ll have a chance to catch the aurora this far south again.
Although it’s the furthest south I’ve photographed them, it’s not the first time I’ve photographed the Northern Lights in the U.K. In March 2017, I was on the Trotternish Peninsular on the Isle of Skye, peering out at the northern horizon in the hope of seeing the lights with my naked eyes. All I could see was a white, hazy patch, a patch which my camera, being more sensitive to light than my eyes, transformed into a colourful display. This is something about aurorae that up until that point I didn’t know – that it’s rare to see coloured aurora with the naked eye. Although it differs from person to person, most people experience the aurora in monochrome unless the display is particularly powerful or directly overhead. That’s why it’s so vital to have a camera when hunting aurora. In most cases, the lights would be easy to miss without it.
I have seen colourful aurora though, which is why it came as a surprise that this isn’t always the case, on the South Island of New Zealand, next to Lake Ōhau. Stood on the shore of the lake as night fell, I watched the vast, empty sky fade from dusky pink to purple. I dropped a stone in my pocket to help me remember the stillness of the place, which was all rocks, water, mountains and silence. Later, once it was dark, a man from the lodge where we were staying came over to my friend and I to ask if we were interested in the Southern Lights. They’re out there right now, he said. We stepped into the darkness to look and were greeted with strange, red curtains of light, billowing slowly and silently through the sky. I had no means of photographing them back then, as the camera I carried would have been useless in such circumstances. But more than that, trying to photograph them would have meant going back inside to retrieve my camera, and the idea of leaving those otherworldly lights, even for a moment, was unthinkable.