Aurora

Saw the aurora last night, for the first time ever. I don’t know what I expected. I waited until the sun was good and set and then I poked my head out the back door just shy of the motion sensor on my neighbour’s flood light. There was a pale haze in the sky, like a long thin cloud. Off to the west, the sky was noticeably pinkish. To the naked eye it all looked sort of blurry, more the suggestion of an aurora than an actual aurora, like in the pictures.

Sam and I hopped in the car and drove out towards Weardale, where the sky gets Dark. All along the road outside of Sunniside and Tow Law we saw people parked up on the verges, faces skyward. We parked up above Wolsingham and took some pictures by the side of the road. I think that by this point the geomagnetic storm or whatever was weakening. We still captured some pretty magical pictures, and it was fun to tool through the countryside in the middle of the night on a Thursday.