Thursday 17 October 2024

Aurora Borealis

Do you know, in 2018 I went all the way to Iceland to see the Northern Lights - and they were rubbish! A white, barely there, mist in the sky, and a brush of green on the camera was all I came home with (obviously the holiday itself was amazing and I would love to go back, but the lights themselves were a disappointment). 

Last night (as I wrote this), I walked out of my back door at about 10pm, and was greeted with this fantastic display of bright pink in the sky! Which was actually visible to the naked eye too!! Not perhaps quite this level of pinkness, but there were definitely moving streaks of clear pink dancing around up there. I had gone outside by myself but immediately raced back inside, dragging Mr DT from his cosy spot snuggled up in bed, shoving his arms into his dressing gown and insisting he come outside with me. He wasn't quite as impressed as me (or at least pretended not to be) and didn't stay out in the cold as long, although that may have been because he didn't have shoes on and it was nippy. I even rang The Mother and got her outside her house as well!

I love the stars in these photos, they look like sprinkled fairy dust. Apparently there were quite a few shooting stars seen but I didn't see any. we are vaguely on the flight path to Gatwick airport so we did have a lot of aeroplanes circling in the distance which was quite cool through the pink haze. 


Isn't it amazing? And isn't technology amazing to be able to just snap these photos on a phone without having to change any settings at all. If they come back again I'm going to investigate what I need to do on my camera to get even clearer photos. This aurora was pink and purple, which is apparently down to nitrogen particles interacting with incoming particles. The green aurora I saw in Iceland was oxygen particles and is the more common colour to see so this is very exciting and utterly beautiful!! 


I was feeling very inspired by it the following morning and set to making my own version of the pink aurora - not that I need another project but this can be my bus project when I've finished the current one, and the Stitchscape Swap hoop I've not started yet! It was a landscape scene that needed to be immediately translated into fabric, even if the stitches don't come for a little while! 

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